Mike Doeff - Likes - FriendFeed

curious what people make of the new RT on twitter - Christopher Harris

and Google's acquisitions of Admob and Gizmo5 - Vezquex: God of FF

We should start shortly, I'm still waiting for Steve Gillmor to call me up. - Robert Scoble

ready for Gillmor Gang with @jobsworth - Kevin Marks

Livestream launches free live streaming to iPhone and iPod Touch Safari. http://iphone.livestream.com/ - Vezquex: God of FF

On the call, should start shortly. - Robert Scoble

New New York Times sounds like something from Futurama. - Vezquex: God of FF

snap, iPhone - Vezquex: God of FF

So... is Palm dead? - Ken Sheppardson

What's palm? - Cliff Gerrish

You remember, Cliff... the last company to release a phone the Robert said was better than the iphone. - Ken Sheppardson

whining about a default setting? - Vezquex: God of FF

Didn't 3com used to own them... - Cliff Gerrish

Before the Apple people took over... - Ken Sheppardson

I like that slogan: "It's geekier" - Cliff Gerrish

No, Android is Linux to Apple's Apple. - Ken Sheppardson

iPhone = Windows, Palm = Apple, Android = Linux ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

Scoble needs something to argue about to feel relevant - scott anderson

Maybe Microsoft should release a phone operating system... - Ken Sheppardson

Here we go... - Mike Doeff

Hold on, hold on... Michael... did you *pay* for that Droid? - Ken Sheppardson

that was bizarre. i was getting overlapping audio. And Ken, you are a naughty, naughty boy. :) - Karoli

Ken - you trouble maker you! - Rob La Gesse

scott: give me a break. - Robert Scoble

I bought my own Droid. - Robert Scoble

I'm buying a Droid tomorrow - on a G1 now - Kevin Marks

I'm afraid to try the Droid as I'm pretty heavily emotionally invested in the Pre :-) - Ken Sheppardson

dang, you guys are really making me want a Droid. And Scoble hating is a great bonus. - Vezquex: God of FF

geeks make me laugh...the latest and greatest rivalries of geek toys. too bad Aron's not here to be one of the cool kids. - Karoli

As we saw with the Pre, you can say some device "single handedly restored" whatever, but just wait six months... - Ken Sheppardson

Is the web the platform, or are we seeing 2 or 3 new platforms in this space? - Cliff Gerrish

The web is the one true platform. - Vezquex: God of FF

one platform to rule them all? - Karoli

These guys are pissing me off..give me a break talking about how much better the apps are - Android just needs a little more time until the apps are mature - iPhone didn't have apps at first. The 1st version of the Facebook app wasn't perfect, there have been enhancements, upgrades etc - Kenny

what nokia is dead? - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

What market doesn't have one big 50% market share leader and 2-3 alternative smaller players? - Ken Sheppardson

the Android OS is an integrated component model where iPhone is a monolithic app model - scott anderson

The fact that Android is now getting momentum means, more, and better apps are coming very soon. Loving my HTC Hero !!! - Jim @TechFrog Alden

Who's the really old guy leading this whole thing? - Kenny

It is too soon to draw conclusions, folks. - Mona Nomura

Kenny: Steve Gillmor. - Robert Scoble

Kenny: I can't compare products based on what might be. I have to look at WHAT IS!!!! - Robert Scoble

Mona: Is it too early to draw the conclusion that more than one option can survive? ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

Thanks Robert - Kenny

Android is where the market is heading, more so outside the US, where iphone is a bit player. - mark w webster

mark: when I travel overseas I see iPhone usage very heavy. - Robert Scoble

I am very happy with my Droid. The apps are updating for the new Android 2.0. A new update to Twidroid will be out next week according to a tweet from the developer today. - Mike Shulman

mono is being ported to Android - scott anderson

you mix with geeks Robert :) - mark w webster

True Robert, but I think Android will only improve as time goes on, just like Apple and the iPhone did. - Kenny

I can see the back of Robert Scoble's head right now. This is too much real time web. ;) - Eric @ CS Techcast

The bar should not be set solely on platform and hardware -- the devs are a huge part of a phone's success. If Android developers step up, and the iPhone stays proprietary to AT&T, that opens up a whole new ball game. - Mona Nomura

HTML5 may make the apps more irrelevant. - Rob La Gesse

How is it that guys like this who love Tech, are considered the Top of Social Media all have the worst Web Cams, Audio Levels at all ranges and are crying about cutting each off like they are in some Playground, this is why nobody pays attention to them, blah! - Lorenzo

the Droid is just one phone. think about the difference between G1 and Droid. the next leap will be just as significant. - scott anderson

Not if your data plan cannot support it. AT&T's 3G is garbage and I don't have the patience to wait for sites to load. Hence, apps FTW. - Mona Nomura

HTML5 is key - the new platform for mobile web on all phones - Kevin Marks

I love all the commentary regarding Apple control of the app store. You should have tried building apps for Verizon. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get an application cleared to be put into their deck. You couldn't even write apps for Verizon if you didn't have a small war chest. - Jerry Schuman

Mona, agree 100% - Karoli

Even RIM hardcore fans are ready to jump to Android. - Karoli

I suspect the most disruptive thing to happen to the handset industry will be a regulatory end to carrier lock in in the next 3-5 years. - Ken Sheppardson

@Lorenzo I am a big fan of these guys. By the way, who was that guy in the East Coast Vegas video? - PC Easy

Am I really listening to grown men talk about Cell Phones? This country is doomed - Lorenzo

iphone market share over here tops less than 5%, though app availability is high on buyers minds, Android is making good strides in that area, it's a two horse race IMO. - mark w webster

RIM will be implementing WebKit browser in 2010 - Marc Delurgio

RIM hasn't progressed - at all, and their attempts have been nothing but FAIL. BB Storm? Really?? - Mona Nomura

ending carrier lock would be awesome! - Vezquex: God of FF

Lorenzo - you don;t have to watch/listen... - Kenny

I know kenny, however i think im permitted to give my opinion as long as I dont use vulgarity - Lorenzo

Changing the balance of power for phone development is key. The platform has been taken away from the telecoms. - Cliff Gerrish

I call bullshit on that fact. Get ready when each different handset starts having different requirements. - Jerry Schuman

True - Kenny

And those who keep bringing up HTML5, perhaps on Verizon's data it may run fine but on AT&T's unreliable 3G? NO. CDMA ftw. - Mona Nomura

I still think for a polished product that is easy to pick up and use, the Palm Pre is still my Favorite. - Luke Kilpatrick

100k iPhone apps doesn't matter - make 50 essential apps are avail for top 4 platforms, then the playing field is leveled - Marc Delurgio

I'm a big fan of Google Voice, except for the translations - they're pretty bad - Kenny

I'm sure I'm wrong, but I expect Android to take over handsets the same way Linux has taken over the desktop :-/ - Ken Sheppardson

lol - Kenny

Scoble - I have ridden with you while you use a cell phone for navigation - it is VERY scary! - Rob La Gesse

Palm Pre was introduced only recently here, a real Turkey, just in time for Xmas. - mark w webster

Lorenzo - I've seen you on Twitter and I know you use vulgarity. - PC Easy

Apple doesn't do cloud services. A single iPhone app developer will have a hard time competing with Google on that front. - scott anderson

Android will take over handsets because Windows Mobile is pitiful and iPhone OS is not available to 3rd-party devices. - Vezquex: God of FF

PCEasy, are you not the person on twitter that continues to make horrible comments about Leo's face? - Lorenzo

Rob: that's because iPhone doesn't do turn-by-turn so you have to look at the screen. - Robert Scoble

WM is dead, or at least, its in dire need of defibrilation - mark w webster

I still think the Droid reminds me of the feel of a 80's Transformer. I think the HTC Hero is a much more polished phone and will get better with Android 2.0. - Luke Kilpatrick

Google Nav does work pretty well, especially since its free, but it does need some improvements - but it's good enough that I canceled my Verizon Navigator - Kenny

apps will die - web apps will prevail - Marc Delurgio

IT's on all these devices, Steve - Ken Sheppardson

The Pre does turn by turn, for free and it works great. I still think the Google map app is pretty good. - Luke Kilpatrick

Robert Scoble, why is it you top tech geeks cant get your audibles to the same level, let alone have a decent webcam? Also, do you feel that 1938Media is slightly over-rated? Thank you - Lorenzo

HTML5 is not Reality. Not until we get rid of IE6 - Luke Kilpatrick

Lorenzo: that's Steve Gillmor who has control of audio levels. - Robert Scoble

Luke: IE6 isn't a problem on smartphones :-) - Ken Sheppardson

IE6 is dead. anyone who develops for it is a fool. - Karoli

Who is 1938media? I heard he's telling lies but I blocked him so I don't know what he's up to. - Robert Scoble

Robbie Scobbie, I thank you. - Lorenzo

The levels aren't perfect but still pretty good considering that you have 5 different people in 5 different locations on laptops - Kenny

He always talks crap about you on twitter to pceasy - Lorenzo

Chrome and Safari - Jerry Schuman

firefox for when I need firebug - Jerry Schuman

Lorenzo: I don't care. He lies. That's all I need to know. - Robert Scoble

IE only when my machine needs to dial home to Microsoft for something - Ken Sheppardson

I tried Chrome in Ubuntu and couldn't access any https:// pages. - Vezquex: God of FF

Yes but as a developer that builds web apps I still have to target IE6 which sucks majorly but its still the standard at enterprise. - Luke Kilpatrick

Android is licensed with Apache 2.0, a very business-friendly open source license - scott anderson

Every iPhone developer enters a royalty agreement with Apple. - Rob La Gesse

"Large market share" isn't the same thing as "network effect" - Ken Sheppardson

IE6 is the main reason I like doing Mobile dev better than just core web dev as you only need to target 1 main rendering engine - Webkit. Although there are some differences between iPhone, Andriod and Palm Pre. iPhone has the best implementation. - Luke Kilpatrick

Still waiting on my Ribbit Voice invite code. - Jerry Schuman

Whos the heavy breather? :) - Kenny

Jerry, use gang09 - Cliff Gerrish

thanks cliff - Jerry Schuman

Neat. Will Ribbit have VOIP? Is it free? - Vezquex: God of FF

Holy Macro, what a time I had getting here. - Matt Terenzio

So, can we use Ribbit + iPhone to equal GoogleVoice + Droid? - Cliff Gerrish

Cliff Basically. - Robert Scoble

Although I will compare those this weekend. - Robert Scoble

Ok, that breathing is creepy - Jim @TechFrog Alden

What happened, Matt? Your FF browser crash? :) - Rob La Gesse

Hm... that code just gets me an "account reserved".... - Ken Sheppardson

Hey Kevin, give the live web audience a ribbit code... - Cliff Gerrish

ribbit code for gillmor gang listeners is "gang09" sign up at ribbit.com - Kevin Marks

Had to reboot everything was moving slowwww - Matt Terenzio

Kevin: But that just gets you a "Ribbit Account Reserved" email? - Ken Sheppardson

sweet, thanks Kevin Marks. - Vezquex: God of FF

Should kids have a google voice number? With parents controlling the switchboard? - Cliff Gerrish

the accounts will go out over the next few days Ken - Kevin Marks

Cool. Thanks, Kevin. - Ken Sheppardson

LOL - Kenny

looking forward to trying ribbit.... - Karoli

On the net - Apple could fade like AOL, The Apple Tablet will make Iphone, android Apps quite secondary. Phone will have a much smaller earprint. - Arnie Klaus

double dare someone to call Scoble. - Vezquex: God of FF

OK, everyone -- call Robert! - Cliff Gerrish

what was that numnber?? - Kenny

I will admit - I called Robert once, trying to find him at a meet-up in Half Moon Bay. It came in handy. - Mike Doeff

Doh, crunchpad!?!? - Kenny

i want a crunchpad, she whined. - Karoli

So it should be out soon?? - Kenny

will the crunchpad run Android? - scott anderson

...or Chrome OS - Ken Sheppardson

no contact points, composite enclosed, for kids and up - Arnie Klaus

Chrome w/ Android plug-ins - scott anderson

+1-425-205-1921 - Robert Scoble

Get it out before Christmas Mike. - Mike Doeff

I'm amazed you don't get a ton of prank calls - Kenny

+1-707-WEB-LIVE - Matt Terenzio

Kenny: I have your phone number if you call me. - Robert Scoble

More QVC... :-) - Ken Sheppardson

I've never called but if I need a tech opinion I might hit you up - Kenny

tablets will replace kiosks not personal devices - scott anderson

One handed computing - easy to misinterpret that one - Mike Doeff

haha, one-handed computing. - Vezquex: God of FF

books, text books, movies, homework... - Arnie Klaus

solar - Arnie Klaus

maps, cookbooks, phonebooks... - Ken Sheppardson

I think Apple bought major textbook rights. - Arnie Klaus

On train to NYC yesterday NewBiz News conference there were 8 newspapers 1 kindle and two iphones in my car. I was using iphone - Matt Terenzio

doorbell on TV! I like this guy. - Vezquex: God of FF

Mostly Wall Street Journals - Matt Terenzio

Tuck that phone into my ear, on with the tablet - Arnie Klaus

My comcast phone shows up on my tv. Really like it. - Cliff Gerrish

my doorbell has it's own Gmail address - you can email to ring it. And no - will NOT give that number out :) - Rob La Gesse

Remember when we all had to carry backpacks in school? - Arnie Klaus

Wasn't Bluetooth supposed to handle all this? - Ken Sheppardson

My backpack is in the cloud now... - Cliff Gerrish

Alright guys, I gotta go. Keep up the good debate! - Kenny

I need to go look at how Activitystrea.ms handle location and proximity... - Ken Sheppardson

Cliff, does that mean just on the internet or do you mean virtual hosting as in AWS or Rackspace etc - Matt Terenzio

will iPhone apps run on all these different types of devices? does Apple have the resources to make that happen? - scott anderson

Bump is on the Android as well - Kenny

I just want seamless handoff between my cell phone and desk phone - Ken Sheppardson

Matt, all sorts of cloudish locations.. - Cliff Gerrish

I ask because someone used cloud at work today and I'm pretty sure they meant just on a server. I didn't ask. - Matt Terenzio

We don't really have an identity concept (or agency) that works with this node linking idea. - Cliff Gerrish

Of course, my office isn't exactly Cliff level - Matt Terenzio

It's a different level in the protocol stack, Robert - Ken Sheppardson

tweetdeck with touch - Arnie Klaus

i love my Kindle. LOVE IT. - Karoli

I'm getting a Nook. Dumb name - nice device. - Rob La Gesse

the techies are gonna be so harsh on the crunchpad - Marc Delurgio

I love getting instant books. I love sending PDFs over for reading later. I love getting The Nation automatically. - Karoli

Rob, I'm thinking of getting a Nook for my daughter...to compare. - Karoli

Books will go down fast in the coming months - Matt Terenzio

Kindel is bridge technology to the post script generation....Iʻve read many more books through audio. - Arnie Klaus

As soon as a standard format emerges, it's over - Matt Terenzio

The Nook looks cool but I'm waiting for the Apple Tablet. - Robert Scoble

the Nook runs on Android - scott anderson

Virtual roundtable time... any thoughts on spdy protocol announcement? - Alberto Saavedra

Scoble - yes - assuming it has a bright-light readable screen. I doubt it. - Rob La Gesse

scott, that's one of the reasons I want the Nook. (for my daughter, of course...LOL) I want to try an Android device. - Karoli

I wish, the textbooks comes on ebook usable format instead of watered down version. - ashish

ashish, agree. textbooks should be ebook, full version. - Karoli

Using the term "open" to mean seven different things at the same time can be a problem... - Ken Sheppardson

@ken - glad you opened that line of thought - Rob La Gesse

Ken: agreed. - Robert Scoble

imagine if our phones ran on closed networks - scott anderson

It's really just a question of whether any node can listen and talk over the network. - Cliff Gerrish

How do we define variable communities? - Arnie Klaus

Scott: they would be like IM was for years. - Robert Scoble

Scott: They do. Call Sprint and ask them if you can use your iPhone on the "open" phone network. Or the device you slapped together from parts you got at Fry's - Ken Sheppardson

good comment Robert (there's your break) - scott anderson

Good show, Steve. Thanks to all. - Karoli

thanks, all! - Rob La Gesse

Great show, thanks. - Mike Doeff

laters - Vezquex: God of FF

Will the textbook publishers allow that to happen without lowering profits? I hope they realize that new form interactive ebooks can create more market opportunities. - ashish

another great show Steve. Your production keeps getting better. - Paul E. Ester

FrontPage? DreamWeaver? http://refreshingapps.com/showcas... - Her Lindsay-ness

22 more comments

Totally brilliant idea. I write my own bad html mockups in a text editor or whatever IDE I'm playing with at the time, but a tool to ease this process would mean I could get on to abandoning the half-finished project much sooner than usual. :-) - Slippy "Threadsbane" Lane

Um, isn't that what Balsamiq does?? - Cyndy

Please god no, don't create another "doesn't need to generate good html" code generator. srsly - Jason Wehmhoener

Well, as for the mockups, there is really great Firefox extension called Pencil. You should try it. - Mladen Srdić

using Cappuccino, an open source framework that makes it easy to build desktop-caliber applications that run in a web browser? - huixing

Paul, have you checked out Axure http://www.axure.com/? I've typically used Visio or resorted to whiteboards/paper as they are easier to edit. - Jauder Ho

Jason, I would be fine with it not generating html at all. As for Balsamiq and some of the others, the idea is actually that it would look more like the final product instead of less. Photoshop gets fonts wrong and stuff because it isn't a web browser, and yet people still keep using it, so it seems that it must have some advantage over the other tools. - Paul Buchheit

Photoshop has two major advantages, multiple uses and precision. Photoshop can be used for more than just web mockups. One person can achieve multiple goals with Photoshop while a mockup tool just makes mockups. The second advantage is the mockups look great in presentations because the author has complete control. Photoshop mockups aren't real they're hyper-real. - Kevin D. White

Are mockups that look exactly like the finished product even desirable? I'm reminded of the "Napkin Look & Feel" (http://napkinlaf.sourceforge.net/#Overvi...) - Laurence Gonsalves

Depends whether your goal is to sketch and idea or create a final design. For the latter, you really do want it to be pixel perfect. For the former, you want a "wireframe" or whatever the cool kids call it these days. - ⓞnor

What ⓞnor said. For "wireframes" a whiteboard is fine, but eventually you want pixel-perfect designs. - Paul Buchheit

Paul, you should check out Denim, http://dub.washington.edu:2007/denim... - imabonehead

Paul have you tried Fireworks, that's what our designers use. - Michael

http://www.balsamiq.com I got this link from Cooper U boards a while back, and a lot of my co-workers have found it very useful. While it's not pixel perfect, it allows for really quick mock ups with the idea that the design of the end product will be done by actual designers. - Sam Ee

http://www.balsamiq.com/product... That's a better link. The demo video sold me on the idea. - Sam Ee

Second attempt: http://friendfeed.com/e... - Paul Buchheit

I've been looking for something like this for years. Balsamiq is definitely a good start, but I feel like there's not quite enough depth yet. Has anyone had luck with stencils like the ones found at http://graffletopia.com/ (for Omni Graffle)? - Sutee Dee

pixel perfect? The web isn't print. Complete control over the rendering environment is an illusion. Don't submit to it! - Andy Bakun

Paul, have you checked out Axure RP? - Jauder Ho

http://gomockingbird.com/ - Neil

Vi is pretty good. You just write some text and point a browser at it. - Cliff Gerrish

Try wireframing and prototyping apps - I am not sure if output is rendered at browser level though. Protoshare.com, jumpchart.com, productplanner.com - TrafficBug

Done, already - Ozkan Altuner

Looks like Bret Taylor of Facebook is talking with the Gang.... - Cliff Gerrish

95 more comments

Hopefully Bret shows up. Otherwise we'll be forced to talk about Twitter's new lists feature and you know where THAT will lead! - Robert Scoble

I want to get a few words in about http://bit.ly/Spawn on Gillmor Gang today - Kevin Marks

we will start in a minute. - Robert Scoble

Only 13 viewers? - beersage

Gillmor Gang is recorded live in front of a live studio audience. - Cliff Gerrish

Oops, missed my calendar notification for this week's episode. - Matt Mastracci

The names have not been changed to protect the innocent... - Aron Michalski

Gillmor Gang is recorded live in front of a real-time web audience... - Kevin Marks

I'm happy to see a simplification of the Facebook API. That's one issue I've always had with the platform. The initial learning curve is very steep. - Matt Mastracci

Scoble still wants to port your email address out of Facebook... - Cliff Gerrish

I don't have enough friends in my email address book to make Scoble's screen look busy enough - Aron Michalski

I did a little hacking on this with @bradfitz's code at http://unmung.appspot.com - Kevin Marks

The question is should Scoble be able to send your email address to another platform, or another application. - Cliff Gerrish

Do I have to agree to TOS with Scoble or does he have to agree with me? - Aron Michalski

Facebook is the intermediary. Although you have a social contact with Scoble. - Cliff Gerrish

Cliff: I did a brute force workaround. I just manually copied the email addresses I wanted into Outlook myself. - Robert Scoble

Robert, it's the programatic access that can lead to looting of addess books. - Cliff Gerrish

The TOS doesn't forbid me from doing that and it only took a few hours. - Robert Scoble

Cliff: yeah, but sorry, if you are a spammer you just go to Mechanical Turk and pay someone to do it. - Robert Scoble

Yes, I agree. But the question is should Facebook facilitate the process? - Cliff Gerrish

Putting money in front of a spammer's problem will reduce the amount of spam dramatically (which is why spammer probably won't use mturk). Maybe Facebook should charge per-user/per-transaction fees to extract email addresses? - Matt Mastracci

"Facebook is an identity platform." Very interesting competitive landscape -- Twitter, Google, MSFT, Comcast? - Cliff Gerrish

"Your inside is out, and your outside is in" - Cliff Gerrish

Comcast? You mean Plaxo? - Ken Sheppardson

"Open Graph API" is a really confusing name for adding webpages to FB as feeds - Kevin Marks

Actually I'm thinking of Comcast making Cable available through the Network for its users. - Cliff Gerrish

And the topic of attention and identity which were of interest to a small group of us is now an issue for a very large group of users. - Aron Michalski

Haven't checked the roadmap but I wonder if there will be more possibilities for API use with pages and not just the main FB friend stream. - beersage

Seems like financial institutions have a better identity play, but they're hopeless with this kind of thing. Credit Cards have a jump on it. Telecoms could also have an opening. - Cliff Gerrish

Does the open graph address pages or items in a stream? - Cliff Gerrish

Anyone ask about the problem of Facebook owning our social graph? - Kurt Jarchow

so FB's "Open Graph API" is the opposite of the Social Graph API that reveals existing connections. - Kevin Marks

This aspect is interesting, in that presence on the internet for a long time could be anonymous and now the value will be from having a unified ID. - Aron Michalski

So it Bret saying it's just marketing spin at this point? ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

You'll see that the owners of the pipe, the bankers and the retailers all want to know who we are so they can get paid. - Aron Michalski

can we identify the source of the metadata item and allow for filtering of what's a valid linkage? - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Robert, are you coming out for SideWiki for Facebook profiles? - Cliff Gerrish

:-) - Robert Scoble

wonder if Bret saw the Realtime chat games orkut launched http://code.google.com/apis... - Kevin Marks

shared labels - is what i would like to see - Bastian

For 'movies' shouldn't I just be able to pipe my Netflix data over? - Cliff Gerrish

Netflix already exports Activity Streams of your movies - FB should read them - Kevin Marks

Yes, rather than building a new and separate data set. Our combining the sets. - Cliff Gerrish

Bret really shouldn't speak of FriendFeed in the past tense. - Cliff Gerrish

Cliff: FriendFeed is not getting new engineering work. - Robert Scoble

Yeah he said "was"... - Bastian

It's often more revealing to hear how people talk about things indirectly than to hear them answer direct questions. - Ken Sheppardson

better late than never...i'll have to catch the first 30 minutes on replay. - Karoli

Friendfeed's conversations aren't duplicated by any of the other players. - Cliff Gerrish

Why would FB buy FF if they weren't headed down that road? To use it or kill it? - Aron Michalski

Interesting to hear the idea of protocols driven by User Interfaes in the realtime space. - Cliff Gerrish

FriendFeed is still rolling out features: http://friendfeed.com/friendf... - LogEx

I totally agree with Robert. The Friendfeed search is incredibly powerful and useful. - Karoli

Permalinks for stream items is a critical feature. - Cliff Gerrish

how long has Bret been in the FB world :) - he's being asked questions about future growth and planning that he may not have even been in the meetings that cover those new items yet :) - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

FB conversations are fractured, across different pages and places. Mobile experience can be a cul de sac of death for a conversation... - Aron Michalski

my criticism of Facebook has nothing to do with the stream. it has to do with the mashup of everyone I've ever known in my entire life. - Karoli

i think it's great that i see other people's comments when i comment on an item on FB - Bastian

I'd like my stream to show me things that I initially reject, and then later come to accept. - Cliff Gerrish

Facebook represents my "real" social network only as it existed 25 years ago. - Ken Sheppardson

we need more depth as to what a "friend" is - need to factor in FOAF items - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Ken, i wish it was that way. It has pieces of every aspect and social graph I've had for my entire life. - Karoli

I'm starting to realize and appreciate Robert as an underdamped dynamic system, oscillating wildly but eventually settling/converging on a steady signal, e.g. the comments today on Wave vs the initial reaction. And I mean that as a compliment, Robert :-) - Ken Sheppardson

There is plenty of conversations I am glad to leave off of FB; 90% of the people from my past have no clue about any of what we are discussing and don't care. - Aron Michalski

Ken, yea - that's a great way to describe him. I agree that he should take it as a compliment - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

I do. - Robert Scoble

Again, it is easy to bring content into FB but why can't I subscribe to an RSS feed of a page like I can w/ a Twitter user? - beersage

my problem: 90% of the people I have contact with in real life have me friended on FB and HATE my politics, leaving me with fluffy little bullshit updates. No conversation. Just nonsense. - Karoli

The FB pipes need to be full duplex. - Cliff Gerrish

I think the part of FF we'll never see in FB is the basic lack of walls in FF and the philosophy that anything and everything can flow freely into and out of the system. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, FF may be the outside part of FB. - Cliff Gerrish

how is the spewing of netflix queuing any different that all of those mafia wars or farm app updates I get on FB ;) - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

If that's the case, Cliff, I'd like to see them embrace that. I may have missed a bunch of signals, but I'm still working on the assumption that FF is feature frozen and will be subsumed into FB. - Ken Sheppardson

I'm glad that neither FF or FB or Twitter will be the hot new toy we all talk about this time next year! - Bastian

Bastian: Twitter is about to release more new features than it has EVER released. Are you sure we won't be talking about them in a year? - Robert Scoble

Bastian, where would be talking about whatever we'll be talking about. - Cliff Gerrish

By the way, Tina says 'hi' to the chat... - Cliff Gerrish

Robert, only if Twitter survives their own creativity and popularity - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

We should have OpenFF any day now... :-/ - Ken Sheppardson

hi back at Tina :) - Karoli

Robert is raring to have a discussion about Twitter lists. :) - beersage

bear: I'm pretty sure that in a year we'll be doing Twitter. Two years, though? Maybe not. Things don't change that fast when they have such momentum. - Robert Scoble

I'm loving this shot of the studio. Rock on. - Karoli

Robert: Twitter maybe, but i'm even more excited about new third party tools build on Tiwtter. Even so everything i was told from the people i know at Twitter, there are cool things coming. - Bastian

yea, that was a great studio shot - nice layout - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

"talking a little about"... so, it's not imminent :-) - Ken Sheppardson

Generalizing twitter to many kinds of Activity Streams is interesting, and I hope Bret picks up on that - Kevin Marks

The thing about FF & Twitter is that they make it possible to curate a stream of a niche topic and put it into context w/ other content on a website. Lost of potential. With FB, you cant use any valuable stream there outside. Still a walled garden. - beersage

I have to say, time listening to the Gillmor Gang is always well spent! - Bastian

yay sponsors! - Karoli

bye all - Karoli

good show - Jamie

Hah, Kevin got cut off. That was a short edition. - beersage

great show - I am loving the increase in quality discussion and the decrease in loud noises - thanks! - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

http://bit.ly/Spawn is Ribbit's launch next Thursday - Kevin Marks

Defrag is week after next - agenda: http://defragcon.com/2009... - Kevin Marks

I added a bunch of accounts, put in "second Life" as a search term, and only came up with one link from one person in the social search results. I guess I have no understanding of who it thinks is in my social circle. I added my friendfeed, twitter, and other accounts to my Google profile, which I think is what it uses to determinine your social profile. There should be other results,... more... - SuezanneC Baskerville

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Google has gone to god damn far with this, Question is are you going to fall for this crap? - Cjay

1. GOOGLES SOCIAL SEARCH IS PHUCKING EVIL! - Cjay

Pushed at me like google is doing me some favor.... This is Crap Crap Crap!!!!!! - Cjay

Let's just help out google to seep into every aspect of our lives and our friends lives and thier friends lives, and the people they know........ - Cjay

as Matt said, those things are already "publicly available web content" - metalerik

I think this post was very insightful. Too many of us (myself included) our preoccupied with documenting an event for our followers (who are probably not even paying attention) instead of just enjoying the moment. - Mike Doeff

I don't know if that's a good idea for you, Robert. You might be better off making a clean break from FriendFeed. - Bruce Lewis

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Thanks Robert, that's great news! Paul, hope you feel better... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Bruce: FriendFeed=Facebook. So, I'm interested in what he's doing and I'm a big fan of Facebook's. Twitter needs some competition. The Fail Whale is getting to me. - Robert Scoble

Another reliable update. - ashish

I know it's a stretch but can we gather specific questions for Paul to answer? - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

When other sites like twitter come out with new features, you want to be at the front of the excited crowd. FriendFeed will make you into that curmudgeon who's always saying, "So what? They did that two years ago at FriendFeed." - Bruce Lewis

I guess the rusty wheel gets the oil... - Cjay

Cjay: I've been working on this interview since before Facebook bought FriendFeed. :-) - Robert Scoble

manielse: well, the interview isn't on 100% yet and now that I've talked about it in public who knows what will happen? But if it does happen of course we'll get you involved. - Robert Scoble

Cjay: I might be a rusty wheel, but remember two things: 1. I put many many thousands of hours into FriendFeed before the sale, bringing my audience over here at great risk to my personal brand. Lots of "experts" like Mike Arrington told me I was wrong to do that. 2. I'm still here. - Robert Scoble

OMGAWWWWW he still has "it" - sofarsoShawn

oh im sorry Robert thats "The squeaky wheel gets the oil first" hehe, wasnt saying your are getting old or anything. - Cjay

I hope Paul gets to feeling better soon. He's a great guy. - Phil G from iPhone

sofarso: I never lost it. :-) - Robert Scoble

But yes I would agree that allowing and or resting your personal branding on a service thats based on a cloud application with it's roots depending on a social network model is very risky. - Cjay

Cjay: actually it's not. It just looks risky. - Robert Scoble

To those giving Scoble crap for being on FF, aren't you tired of that? You all have been doing that for at least a year. Enough. For us on FF, we'd love to see an interview, thanks. - Eric @ CS Techcast

Paul, get well soon - Shane

Well, I'm done for tonight. Thanks you Robert for the chat... - Cjay

Good luck for the interview, Robert and thanks for the update. Hope Paul gets better soon. - Mahendra (SkepticGeek)

Thanks everyone. I'm actually not "very sick" though, just "kind of sick" -- it's mostly messing up my sleep. - Paul Buchheit from iPhone

be well! - Laura Norvig

Chicken soup - but stay away from those soul books ;) Hope you're up to speed soon, Paul. - Micah Wittman

Looking at the time-scale, doesn't that actually answer the question? You don;t wait THAT long to deliver good news or to debunk a false rumour that killings your platform (well, Zucks platform). - Jim Connolly

Paul - sorry to hear that! (it's 2:30 am here, I can empathize with your sleep problem) - Susan Beebe from BuddyFeed

Eric, sorry if it sounded like I was giving him crap. That wasn't my intention. I think Scobleizer has a serious career decision to make: http://ourdoings.com/ourdoin... - Bruce Lewis

The problem i see is that social network cloud applications seem to live in peoples heads rent free. - Cjay

Hope you feel better, Paul. - Kol Tregaskes

That will be an interesting interview, thanks for posting this update. - Dan Morrill AKA Techwag

Can't wait for the interview!! Thanks to you and Paul for keeping us updated!! - Rosemary Sorg

:? - CW™

Robert, you will never leave FriendFeed as long it is here:) - Patrik Johansson

+1 Patrik - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Robert, do you think Twitter is too unreliable or do you think the competition is healthy? - John Cass

Feel better soon, Paul! - Ruchira S. Datta

The walrus has eaten the oysters: http://bit.ly/nJrdl - Michael Slattery

What's the topic for today? - Matt Mastracci

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Threadsy. The Gillmor Gang should be great today. Google/Mr. Softy and Tw*tter... - Cliff Gerrish

Matt: there are too many things to talk about today. Twitter. Flickr. Windows 7. Etc Etc. - Robert Scoble

I'm standing by waiting for the Skype call, by the way. - Robert Scoble

Exciting week... Mainstreaming of real-time search and a new Windows rev. - Matt Mastracci

We are connecting everyone now. Just a few more minutes and we'll be on air. - Robert Scoble

We are live! - Robert Scoble

Everything is dead. - Ken Sheppardson

Long live everything - Mike Doeff

omg - people still using FF? :) - Nick Halstead

isn't that what Friendfeed does? - Karoli

No, it's different, Karoli. I've also used it a bit, and it's more of a "universal inbox" than FriendFeed. It's just a client, rather than a stand-alone service. - Ken Sheppardson

Is there a recording of the Tim Berners-Lee conversation somewhere? - Mike Doeff

thanks, Ken. It's one of those services that definitely interests me...if I ever get in. :) - Karoli

Nick: I still use RSS too. Saying something is dead is dead. - Robert Scoble

"Everything is Broken" -Bob Dylan - Jerome Hughes

We individually kill and give life to things every day. I don't use Google Reader much anymore, for instance. So to me Google Reader is dead. - Robert Scoble

I used to think I'd want a universal inbox, but stuff like Threadsy have reminded me that I really want different "layers"/urgency in my inbox, e.g. SMS > IM > email - Ken Sheppardson

Robert, I still use Google Reader...but only when what I'm seeing on Twitter/Friendfeed doesn't feel balanced to me. I can usually get that balance by going back to GR. - Karoli

Karoli: lists will bring that balance to Twitter. - Robert Scoble

Ken, I'd definitely need filters or I'd just run away from the inbox screaming... - Karoli

I still use GR - but I have about 10 feeds - the rest I get supplied by Twitter/TweetMeme - Nick Halstead

the issue i have with tweetmeme, etc is how easily the echo chamber develops. I love it, but want to reach outside of it for info sometimes. - Karoli

Karoli: I agree - the core categories will always be full of the echo/main crowd - but we will soon launch the ability for you to build your own channels that are filtered to your 'exact' requirements - Nick Halstead

Used Threadsy 2 weeks ago, and okay concept, needs work still. - JimmyJet

In the demo yesterday, Microsoft claimed that their Bing/Twitter search results filter out spam and surfaces quality results based on "social relevance" - Mike Doeff

because it's a beta for a few 1000s....wait for lists to be rolled out... - Antonella Stellacci

Mike, they're weighting it based on some kind of authority? - Karoli

so "normal" people don't want to find new friends who share their interests? - Jerome Hughes

Whatever it is, it's got to work for 'normal' people. - Cliff Gerrish

@mikedoeff: Who decides "social relevance"? @Scobleizer Who is to say that this "social relevance' will be a democratic system? How can we prevent a new SUL/TechCrunch to happen, with people being disqualified for having "different" views? - Antonella Stellacci

They called it "social relevance" but didn't really drill into what that means. Maybe some combination of # of followers, number of tweets, age of the account, verified status, etc. - Mike Doeff

When will "normal" people get access to Twitter lists? I don't have it on my account. I might start using Twitter if I did. - Ken Sheppardson

Ah...there's the 'track' ref. It's like coming home. :) - Karoli

https://twitter.com/lists... - Jerome Hughes

Yeah, I'm not one of the cool kids who get the lists feature on Twitter. :) - Karoli

Potential issue with Twitter lists: Someone posts a list of CIO's. Sales rep's from Oracle, SAP, etc. use that list to pitch their products to those CIO's with @messages or DM's. Or they could find all of the people inside a company by finding a company list. It'll be like a free version of Jigsaw. - Mike Doeff

lists =meta-data....so discovery of new users is one of the options... - Antonella Stellacci

@mike u can DM a list? (sry for the stupid question, I don't have lists :( - Antonella Stellacci

Is there convergence on a standard for lists, or is it too early? - Cliff Gerrish

I wonder which will win out: sending stuff out to specified groups/audiences, or just sending stuff out to "everyone", and having whatever permissions you've assigned to specific people determine whether or not they see it. I guess it's the same thing. Nevermind. ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

Antonella, you can't DM a list but it's an easy way to collect twitter id's in a specific niche. You can go down the list and follow people individually. - Mike Doeff

thanks Mike. - Antonella Stellacci

Adding real username/URLs to Facebook was remedial. - Ken Sheppardson

Cliff: Twitter will be the defacto list standard almost overnight. - Robert Scoble

Mike: yes, @reply spam is a big problem. One that's solveable, though. - Robert Scoble

Certainly, Identi.ca will follow suit, but will Facebook? - Cliff Gerrish

And Mike, if a major company did @reply spam they would see a huge negative PR backlash. - Robert Scoble

I wouldn't be so sure about Identica. Their feature set has already diverged from Twitter's. e.g. Groups http://identi.ca/doc/groups - Ken Sheppardson

Ken, they'll have to support both. - Cliff Gerrish

Robert, I agree - would be a very bad move if PR firm, sales people, etc. abuse the lists features. They'll end up on a PR Twitter blacklist :) - Mike Doeff

It centralizes with the user -- not with the services. This ties in to the purpose-centric web and the sidewiki discussion. - Cliff Gerrish

So Threadsy isn't a service? Where's the line between services and clients? - Ken Sheppardson

So will we see search come to Threadsy streams? - JimmyJet

Is FriendFeed a client or a service? - Ken Sheppardson

Mint is a front end to Yodlee. - Cliff Gerrish

Kevin - send video. - Cliff Gerrish

How long will it take Google to kill Threadsy with Gmail? - Ken Sheppardson

Private room, Robert. - Ken Sheppardson

Wonʻt Wave to that? - Arnie Klaus

Robert: Click on your entry, click "Edit > Disable Comments" - Ken Sheppardson

Ken: no. I want my curation to be public. Arnie: Wave could be useful. - Robert Scoble

Ken: if I turned off comments I won't have the ability to type anything underneath the item. - Robert Scoble

Arnie: Wave would be useful if it weren't stuck in the very lame email metaphor. - Robert Scoble

But is that all you want to do? Be able to add comments to your post without other people being able to do so? I'm a little confused... - Ken Sheppardson

Arnie: Wave is something I'm watching a lot. - Robert Scoble

Ken: I want to curate and put it on MY OWN STREAM. Without you being there. - Robert Scoble

..or you want to use FriendFeed as a text editor? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken: FriendFeed doesn't work for what I want. - Robert Scoble

Ken: FriendFeed got close, though. - Robert Scoble

Robert, as long as none of us have to read it. Go ahead and make your own stream. - Cliff Gerrish

I keep hearing you say that, Robert. I'm trying to understand exactly what it means. What about a private room/group? - Ken Sheppardson

Robert: I see a connect between Wave and the Twitter deal achieving curation - Arnie Klaus

Ken: now you understannd why I'm so frustrated with FriendFeed. It won't get many new features. - Robert Scoble

Arnie: me too. - Robert Scoble

Wave traps me...I want the ability to opt out of specific waves. - Karoli

Ken: Private groups don't do what I want. I want a public curation where everyone can watch JUST ME. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Would "only let me comment on this entry" do it? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken: very close. But now we need to go further. Let me post a video there. An audio there. A picture there. And bring in other tweets and items. - Robert Scoble

The reality is that no one's interested in 'only scoble' -- everyone wants to create their own mix. - Cliff Gerrish

Robert: So... a room where only admins (i.e. you) can post and comment, but everyone can view? - Ken Sheppardson

Cliff: absolutely not true. My blog proves you wrong. - Robert Scoble

Ken: now you are getting there. - Robert Scoble

Robert, I'm only interested in certain posts from your blog. I don't need the whole stream. You're in my mix, you just don't know it. - Cliff Gerrish

Cliff: and to rub salt in a wound. Twitter proves you wrong. - Robert Scoble

Every time Steve says, "Rob?" - I start to answer :) - Rob La Gesse

Cliff: that's cool. So you are listening to a group curation then. - Robert Scoble

Robert: That's a pretty minor incremental fix, I'd think. Right now there are three types of rooms 1) Private, 2) Standard only admins can post, anyone can comment, 3) Public. Seems like a fourth type where only admins can post/comment but everyone can view would be pretty easy. - Ken Sheppardson

Hope Threadsy has security for the UN's/PW's they require for each service?? - JimmyJet

Scoble, yes. I use a microcommunity to filter items -- not full feeds. - Cliff Gerrish

Ken: even easy stuff takes engineering time. - Robert Scoble

Threadsy in Chrome gets a basic auth pop up from twitter.com for my API credentials every time it tries to access Twitter :-) - Ken Sheppardson

Cliff: I know. I have seen this. Sort of like how TechMeme works. - Robert Scoble

Robert: Sure, but asking Paul to add a fourth room type sure seems easier than casting out some general lazyweb request for curation tools ;-) - Ken Sheppardson

Scoble, techmeme is read only. This is a little different. - Cliff Gerrish

Ken: FriendFeed has no engineering team working on many new features. I've already asked for new features. I've been asking for this stuff for years. - Robert Scoble

Ken: Threadsy in Chrome (4): I am no longer getting a request to relog or give permission to twitter. refreshing auto like it should - amarquart

Does Facebook still prevent developers from caching data for more than 24hrs? - Ken Sheppardson

Threadsy seems to define the pipe that exists between services. The Oauth issue is critical -- it comes bak to identity. - Cliff Gerrish

Ken: I believe so. - Robert Scoble

Windows is dead. - Ken Sheppardson

Flickr is dead. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken: Windows is Amazon's top seller. I want to be dead like that. - Robert Scoble

Scoble, we are already giving curated content e.g. this channel that is defined by 20 of the top Twitterati - http://twitterati.tweetmeme.com/ - soon these channels can be built by anyone - Nick Halstead

Ok - i didnt get in on this till now - will it be archived? - Chris Jackson

Yeah, it'll be published to YouTube in a day or so. - Cliff Gerrish

Nick: that's not really what I want? - Robert Scoble

ok - Chris Jackson

Any timeframe from Twitter on when us lowly masses will get lists? - Ken Sheppardson

im still waiting for twitter lists to hit my account. - Chris Jackson

let them eat cake! classic. - amarquart

Ken: a few weeks. - Robert Scoble

Can I trade Wave invites for List access? - Ken Sheppardson

RSS??? - Ken Sheppardson

Steve and Robert - the Gillmor Gang has become my most favorite source of social news and trends watch. - Chris Jackson

Thanks Chris! - Robert Scoble

:) funny Ken - Chris Jackson

Translation: No idea. - Ken Sheppardson

Ken: translation: "FriendFeed is not worth wasting engineering effort on." - Robert Scoble

Does Threadsy have any sort of Activitystrea.ms support? - Ken Sheppardson

Ken: I don't know. - Robert Scoble

Thanks, great show. - JimmyJet

Thanks to Steve and all, nice to finally catch the show in real time again! - Jerome Hughes

Good show - Eric Logan

very good show...wish my phone hadn't rung at the end, but I still got my fix :) - Karoli

The after show is pretty good too. Marks: why doesn't Twitter have searched scoped to the people I follow? - Cliff Gerrish

Missed it again. I'll be back. - Matt Terenzio

RSS?? (which we all know is dead, ..but still); mp3 ?? Steve, I understand your effort to make a point by inconveniencing us with lack of rss, I get it, but from that stage further it is just pain in the a**. - Mindaugas Dagys

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/bootleg... - Ken Sheppardson

Thanks Ken, but the last bootleg there at the moment is GillmorGang2009.10.15 - Mindaugas Dagys

The RSS feed for the Youtube channel is http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds... and after a new show is uploaded there, I'll update the bootleg feed - Jack

I know that doesn't answer everyone's questions, but I hope it helps. - Paul Buchheit

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Paul, working on friendfeed.com stuff or facebook.com? - Kol Tregaskes

I like the first sentence. The rest is just gravy. - Derek Coward

I'm totally happy if we just reside on decent servers, and get occasional IT help... We'll keep the rest of the ship running :) - Christopher Galtenberg

Paul - is that why it's been slower lately vs.pre-fb ? - Allen Stern

Paul please repeat it in re-phrased form: Friendfeed is NOT going to repeat destiny of Jaiku? Y/N - A.T.

*processing statement...* - Micah Wittman

Can't wait... **Fingers tapping desk impatiently** - AJ Batac

But what does "going away" mean, Paul? And what does "team" mean? And when you say "pre-announce", are you talking about the Palm Pre? - Ken Sheppardson

Allen, the slowness is due to growth (more users and more data), but I put in a few fixes yesterday that should speed things up a bit. - Paul Buchheit

thanks paul - Allen Stern

Paul, sometimes when I open up threads I get the Opps... error. Is that related? It has been happening more and more these last few days. - Kol Tregaskes

Still better than twitter and facebook. Thanks for the update! - Mike Nencetti

Paul, thanks for the incredible work with FriendFeed. Please, keep it alive! and most importantly keep it FriendFeed! - Ciro

as long as FF doesn't go dark or fall to pieces due to lack of maintenance, i think most ppl would be appeased. - Joe Silence is not dead

Does this mean that the sky is not falling and we should stop running around screaming GODZILLA! and pointing in the direction of FB? - Moved to Facebook from fftogo

also, thank you for making such a great service in the first place! - Joe Silence is not dead

Paul: Did you see http://www.thetechnewsblog.com/2009... & can you understand why it got so many people talking / blogging? - Jim Connolly

I second that!! - Kol Tregaskes

Thanks Paul. - CW™

Always nice to hear Paul talking about Friendfeed. - ashish

Thanks Paul for the update. - Roberto Bonini

Thanks for the update! Would like to know if there will be actual development done on FriendFeed in the future (other than bug fixes/minor updates) but I understand if you can't really talk about that too much. - Brandon Titus

Paul: so still no answer from you as to if your 'good stuff' is being developed for FB or FF? The silence suggests it's FaceBook you're working on, or at least transferring FF into an 'add on' for Facebook? - Jim Connolly

Kol, fb platform and openness, primarily. - Paul Buchheit

David Recordon FTW - Jesse Stay

i made a post here - http://www.centernetworks.com/friendf... - one interesting note - maybe FB keeps FF running nice and smooth to keep the early adopters happy as it's a great way to get new features out to them via this channel... just a thought. - Allen Stern

Wow. I've had to eat my words before but these are the best-tasting ones yet! - Akiva Moskovitz from BuddyFeed

Akiva, just add salt. You know which kind :) - Micah Wittman

I'm anxiously waiting for FF->FB Platform integration (drools...) - Jesse Stay

These are the best words I could have expected by Paul. There is obviously a cultural difference between the two platforms and audience and I'm assuming both the former FF team and the FB team recognize that and are sensitive to the community. Thank you Paul and I hope you are feeling better.... - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Allen, you're in good company on that thought - there were musings on that concept right after the buyout. - Micah Wittman

Damn, 20+ likes within a matter of 2 minutes. - Maxamad

When the leader speaks, everyone listens.... :-) - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

I feel a few "I told you so's" coming though... :-) - Jesse Stay

Thanks Paul. Glad you're working on maintaining/improving performance. I've definitely seen issues here. Looking forward towards your influence and changes over at the blue giant. - Mark Krynsky

Paul - thank you for letting us know, and I do hope you feel better! - Jennifer Dittrich

The big question though is will FriendFeed continue to add new features? There's a difference between that and it going away. (and hence my argument w/ Scoble the other day) - Jesse Stay

Paul: Seriously weird that you're there reading this, and totally ignoring each relevant, yes no question. No one's asking you to pre announce anything - just genuinely concerned (and increasingly so) that they do NOT include developing for FF. - Jim Connolly

Jesse +1 - Jim Connolly

I for one want to say: I'm excited! - Jorge Escobar

Jesse: Paul answers that question - BOOM - rumour mill dies and we finally get something positive to say. Ya know what - we won;t get an answer though. He's reading this, he knows the answer, but he won't. - Jim Connolly

Jesse: For now, FF has more features than any other platform for this type of niche. There's some catching up to do before I'm worried about new features. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

AWESOME!! Thanks for helping to quell some concerns Paul. Looking forward to what comes next, but hope that FF never dissappears also. - Travis Koger from iPhone

Shouldn't we be asking the facebook guys, and let Paul keep working? Or is he wearing many hats (friendfeed head honcho and facebook openess builder)? - Mark Essel from iPhone

Paul: I'm right, right? There's something stopping you from saying that you are no longer adding new features to what 'we' know as Friendfeed? - Jim Connolly

Not for nothing, but I took my friendfeed embed off my tiny blog for a few weeks after the facebook buy out. There was just this empty spot on my eyesore of a website, so I put the embed back. We care because we like the connections we've made here and don't want to lose them. It's personal for us to. - Mark Essel from iPhone

Paul: Amazing how quickly you guys have adopted the Facebook attitude to silence. Pity. - Jim Connolly

Paul: blink twice if you will add new features to FF. I won't tell anyone, honest. - Edward Zwart

FWIW he did just upgrade servers. My e-mail notifications are almost real-time. Sounds to me like they're still improving the service. - Jesse Stay

Jim: Don't blame Paul on that, it's not fair. He's only allowed to say so much at this point but I'm very satisfied on what he said. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Jesse: The questions not if they keep the servers running - we want to know if this is a dead platform. - Jim Connolly

Jim: in Paul's defense Facebook's PR is more controlling than FriendFeed's was. I'm sure he's having to consider the effects his words will have on other people inside Facebook. But, I'm VERY HAPPY that Paul is here giving us hints as to what's coming. I wish it had happened six weeks ago so we wouldn't have lost so many people, but maybe that would happen anyway. - Robert Scoble

Jim, there may be a few new things, but as I said, the team is mainly working on fb platform and openness, so it's unlikely that there will be any big new features of ff (except maybe one that I've been thinking about for a while...). - Paul Buchheit

Did the Walrus think about Feed Splicing? :-) - Robert Scoble

Paul: Finally - THAT'S what we were wondering. - Jim Connolly

Cool Dude: Need it to have a classier forum than the parent; Parent is still good but the options here make it just a bit nicer. - ThatDBD

Paul: Pity. At least we now know not to expect any developments or improvements. Thanks for answering the question. Whilst it confirmed my fears, it's good to know what's happening. - Jim Connolly

Johnny said it nicely here: http://www.johnnyworthington.com/... - Mark Essel

I have no problem with FB integration (notice my drool above). Hoping for good friend conversion tools to bring subscribers over as friends or fans on Facebook from FriendFeed. (Connect.registerUsers FTW!) - Jesse Stay

Jim: I'd modify "any" to "many." - Robert Scoble

As a result - Jim has left the platform. - Jim Connolly

Jim: this is a change from last week, by the way. My sources were telling me that we weren't going to get any new features and now Paul is refuting that and saying we might get one new feature here. - Robert Scoble

I'm still drooling - anyone have a towel? - Jesse Stay

Jesse: I'll buy you a virtual one over on Ning. - Robert Scoble

personally, i would be happy just to have FF not fall apart and die. given the post-acquisition situation, anything beyond that is gravy! - Joe Silence is not dead

Robert, I heard Ning is dead - care to send me one on Facebook? ;-) - Jesse Stay

Robert, think of it as 20% time. If there's a feature I want, I'll just add it :) - Paul Buchheit

Thank you for the clarification, Paul, and hope you are feeling better. - WorldofHiglet

a communication channel that will be around and getting improved no matter what happens, our blogs :D I'll be commenting on yours Jim. 20%, that's a helluva light better than 0%, that's actually much more than I expected. Could we crowd source funding to buy you more %? - Mark Essel

Even if there no new features in Friendfeed, I am happy with Friendfeed just staying on. - ashish

how many users are there on friendfeed is there any chance we could buy it out (and get a full time dev staff back)? This platform rules, the dev team is incredible (albeit on facebook stuff now). - Mark Essel

Paul, if you wanted me to bake you some cookies, all you had to do was ask, GEEZ. - Derrick

Question: how many facebook bucks do we have to buy in total to get Paul and team working on friendfeed more of the time (100% ;) - Mark Essel

Twitter doesn't accept cupcakes any more (just check Foursquare when at their offices). How about FriendFeed? :-) - Jesse Stay

Mark, I'm okay with better Facebook integration. There's a lot of power in that (hence my drooling). - Jesse Stay

I've got mixed feelings Jesse. I have friends on facebook. Then I have people that get excited by the same stuff that I do on friendfeed - Mark Essel

Mark, I'm really hoping it ends up the best of both worlds - that would be really cool - Jesse Stay

im going back to efnet - i got a bus for 7pm - anyone want on? :-P - Allen Stern

I don't think you can mix the two sites at all. This has been repeated over and over. FriendFeed's technology might be portable, the concept, no. - Jorge Escobar

Is it too late to do something about it. If it's a question of funds, can't we raise some? I mean this is the best communication platform I've come across yet. Facebook could be, if they just handed over the reigns to Paul, but its unlikely that sort of shift could happen. - Mark Essel

Is the user perceived need of a full time devoted dev staff a fallacy? - Mark Essel

I think you could make the case that some sites and services can in fact be "done" at some point, and simply require resources to keep them up and running. - Ken Sheppardson

Thanks, Paul. - Josh Haley

Ken: That's a potential advantage of turnkey application-level hosting such as App Engine: the resources to keep them up and running are almost entirely outsourced. ~All costs are variable costs, monetization improves over time, variable costs decline over time, so services that are "done" can literally just coast. - Daniel Dulitz

They could open up something like friendfeed. Distributed social networks, with many servers would make search more challenging (search like status could help). The Internet keeps on chugging, it's a distributed information network that's been alive for many years. Our social networks should live, as does the underlying Internet. - Mark Essel

Nice Daniel, I've been having fun playing around there (frankensearch.appspot.com). I'm using it to get to learn a little more about scala and lift now. - Mark Essel

might be a full-time job times 2 or 3 for any fresh devs - safe to say Paul's got a bit of a head-start which changes that equation significantly! .... Also maybe almost as important is simply keeping spammers in check - that makes the difference between a ghost town vs the happy place here we want to keep coming back to enjoy ... - Dan Freeman

Istanbuldan buyuk bir eferimi hakketti bu cocuklar, bizim icin calisiyorlar - MobilAdam from fftogo

Yes, this helps a lot. Thank you, Paul. We were beginning to fight amongst ourselves over these things. - Kamilah Gill

I bet a good contextual advertising box off to the side could generate 35-50million dollars in 6 months with a user base of 1 million people. The assumption is that the average user spends 100-200 bucks on the site making purchases they'd normally make anyway and the affiliate percentage goes to the social host. - Mark Essel

Friendfeed's health needn't be measured by the team's willingness to add new features. Shovels haven't changed in hundreds of years, but nobody is running around saying shovels are dying. A shovel is a great tool --a simple one, at that. If anything, I'd take away features on FF, but that's just me. Thanks for jumping in, Paul. - Chris Baskind

Chris: the problem is that a shovel doesn't get more utility the more people that use it. FriendFeed does. - Robert Scoble

I think the problem is that some people feel extra messianic some days (which is perfectly okay), and then refuse to see/believe/accept when others don't feel the same way AND point it out. The refusing part is not really okay, I guess. - Michael Bravo

Thanks for these reassuring words Paul. Have been working hard to get more Flickr users over here after the recent rash of censorship there. Friendfeed's TOS and lack of censorship is a breath of fresh air compared to Flickr. - Thomas Hawk

I wouldn't say lack of censorship, but community moderated filters. ;) - CW™

I think you're unnecessarily complicating the discussion by adding new vocabulary, Robert. Now you're talking scale, not features. A product needn't expand its feature set to remain useful. Feature creep is the devil, anyway. ;-) - Chris Baskind

You can’t predict what the future of technology will bring; so trying is a fool’s game. You can only adapt to the new realities as best you can. Paul's word is that it is still worth the time to invest in FF the tool. The tool may stay in this form but that's still a better design for me than Twitter. If FF is a shovel, Twitter is a spoon feature-wise. Audience volume-wise, it is the reverse. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

"Feature creep is the devil." truer words! - Joe Silence is not dead

Now this makes me feel hopeful!:) - Patrik Johansson

Ok here's an example of what the social media + contextual ads could like like (sorry can't embed iframe twitter they go full screen so I showed it with friendfeed). But the idea is clear: http://victusmedia.com/social-... This works by sending your tweet stream to zemanta, and then does some backend stuff (which we're working on improving) to get relevant ads from amazon - Mark Essel

I've been rough on you guys in some comments around, but I'm VERY encouraged to see that you guys see a future for FF. Thanks for shining some light, Paul. - Scott of Two Countries

Clarification is appreciated. - DGentry

A respectable amount of information. Thank you. - Matthew DeVries

Chris: Pownce had more "features" than Twitter did, yet it died. So did other aggregators like Jaiku. It's not "features" that matter in social software. Well, at least not completely. It's a combination of features with crowds that matter. If the crowds leave FriendFeed has a lot less utility to everyone than if they flow in. Look at this item here. Why is it interesting? Because there's people here talking about it. - Robert Scoble

take your time PB Bear take your time - Thomas Power

This is definitely more of the answer we were looking for. Thanks, Paul. - Alex Scoble

Thank you - Johnny Worthington from iPhone

All I can say is "thank you" for letting us know what's going on. I'm glad to hear FF will be around for the foreseeable future. :-) LONG LIVE FRIENDFEED! - Jason Huebel

yea - happy happy.... - Chris Jackson

I can't find any wave that is even remotely comparable with friendfeed's conversation, if you found one will you invite me? (muzzle at googlewave) - Emme Ci

Great news, I await the new functions eagerly - Mo Kargas

looks like good news ... - johnpiercy

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the best thing I've seen ALL day!! woo hoo!! Thanks Paul :) {{{ HUG }}} - Susan Beebe

Just a few words of assurance go a long way, Paul. Thank you for finally giving us something more solid to stand on. It's been frustrating for a lot of us waiting for the other shoe to drop and this news makes it much easier to keep investing time in FriendFeed. Please don't be shy about reaffirming that it's not going away on a regular basis because it's always good to hear. - Her Lindsay-ness

I will say it for the least time! Friendfeed kicks ass :). The rest who is saying friendfeed is dying. please SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! - alfred westerveld

Good to read. - Grant Bierman

Tnx Paul, people just want to see that are not "alone" - Lucio Riccardi - CantorJF from FreshFeed

"As a result - Jim has left the platform. - Jim Connolly" - Was this guy ever on the platform?! A quick glance at his most recent posts [first page] show pretty much 100% of posts made from other platforms. Cut him and his blood runs blue. Twitter blue :) - 1x29

IF you glance over the Right Wing guys publications-there is some serious Terrorism encouragement from those sociopaths. This looked like a real strong example of what they are encouraging their followers to do??? Been saying we need to pay attention they are respectable foes to intelligence and their agenda is to win at all costs. Dudes they are great foes, need to,got to, have to pay attention to what they are doing. Peace love your neighbors dudes. - ThatDBD

@ThatDBD I think you're responding to the wrong thread... - Her Lindsay-ness

still curious, but understand - Kim Landwehr

It's fascinating that so many people seem worried about new features. Until recently Twitter added almost no features at all and yet it continued to grow in popularity. FriendFeed's recent slump is all about perception, not tech. - Eoghann Irving

Exactly Eoghann. - Maxamad

these conversations take too much time for narcisists with tight schedules (stars). Publicity skyrocketed Twitter to the limelight. Friendfeeds champions are tech geeks, and folks that love chatting and sharing. There aren't many of us though. Give us time, or let us own the platform with a public ipo /buyin from facebook. Free friendfeed! - Mark Essel from iPhone

Looks like it's official then: FriendFeed lives! On new servers, even! (At least for now...) - Dennis Jernberg

Hoorah! - Ron Bailey

Very glad to hear it!! - Rosalinda Mojarro

word! - Dylan Casey

This is great news! Thanks, Paul, for the update, and if you get a hankering for a feature, great! I'm fine with the tech being your personal sandbox in exchange for keeping the service alive. Robert, I hope this means we'll see more of you and your family - and hear from the ones who have mastered the art of rolling over. Johnny, thanks for having the courage to ask the hard questions (and Louis for helping you frame the issues.) wow - life feels good again! - MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF from iPhone

This is brilliant news from Paul! Now can we put this FriendFeed is dying business to rest please? It's a self fullfilling prophecy because by saying FF is dying, folks begin leaving, causing a downward spiral which would then cause it to come true! - technogran

Wan't it to stay? Then begin spreading the word! Get others to use it! At the moment its not mainstream so encourage ordinary users to use FF! The more popular it becomes the less likely it is to fold. - technogran

Yes :) Paul . Thanks. we love ff :) - sunipeyk

Questions? No just enjoy it. - ★ Soner Gönül

technogran: sorry, today you see what's going on. Bing? Displays your Facebook and Twitter tweets. Google? Twitter. Where's FriendFeed in this equation? Now do you get why FriendFeed is destined to be a tiny niche player and why the real action is on Facebook? - Robert Scoble

Good news :) - Maryam Ardakani from FreshFeed

Is not FF that is going somewhere else (?). Is its user base. - Claudio Cicali ♋

Good to know. - orionstarr from iPhone

Robert, if FF gives me what I'm looking for, why do I care where "the real action" is? If FF serves its niche well, what's the downside? - Scott of Two Countries

Robert, do you mean that Google doesn't index Friendfeed posts? Friendfeed is the first site that comes up if you search for my name. - Victor Ganata

Excellent point Victor - but FF only imports a small % of twitter's posts. Ergo Google is still not getting Twitter. - Roberto Bonini

@Scobleizer - this item is not interesting because of the conversation. it's interesting because of who it's from, and what he said. The fact that there's a conversation around it and that conversation is easy to find and read is a bonus (a feature) that sets this service head and shoulders above others (IMHO). There's really not much interesting in the comments here, if you ask me. You could get rid of all the comments that aren't Paul's and the value of the entry doesn't diminish that much. - Chris Heath

That isn't to say that conversations around items aren't ever useful or valuable (or interesting as robert says)... but in this case i would say it's who it's from and what he said. - Chris Heath

Chris: you nailed, in a single paragraph, why Twitter is winning. You now can choose who shows up on your screen and under what context. Well, I can because I have list support. Everyone else will get that next month. Victor: Roberto is right. I barely see ANY of the good stuff I see on Twitter come over here. Well, it comes here because of my favorites feed, but that isn't in nearly as useful a form as it is over at http://www.twitter.com/scoblei... - Robert Scoble

Robert, you keep saying that's the reason Twitter's winning - I can do that in Facebook and FriendFeed as well. - Jesse Stay

Well, the problem is that Google doesn't seem to index tweets as well as it indexes Friendfeed posts. And Google has never been able go inside Facebook's walled garden. Hopefully that will change. - Victor Ganata

(and I have been able to for the last year or so) - Jesse Stay

Victor, that changed today - see ReadWriteWeb's post. Facebook is opening up public status messages to search engines now. - Jesse Stay

Why is Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed a zero sum game? I use both Twitter and FriendFeed a lot - they have different strengths - and they feed into each other. Facebook I use less, but that's a personal issue because I simply like it less. Why does there have to be a winner? And +1 Scott, if I'm in the niche market that FF is serving and I'm happy with it, why should I care if "the real action" is on Facebook? If that's the case, I'll take FF's "fake action," thank you very much. - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

Good point Jandy - sunipeyk

Paul: Thank you for letting us know status as much as you are able. The fact that you took time to write anything says a lot. So thank you for that. And thank you for FriendFeed in general. It truly does rock. Have a great day. - Morgan Haley

Thank you. - amygeek

Why don't you just give us all Facebook accounts for the one's that don't have them and be done with it. But the Turbocharged FF/FB accounts!! - Gene Williams

@Gene, sorry, you'll have to wait for a FB invite like everyone else! - Andrew C

@Andrew Oh that sucks, I'm still waiting for my Facebook invite. Do you have one to spare? - Patrik Johansson

FF team needs 20% time at FB to keep inventing the next. - Christopher Galtenberg

This is great to hear, it would be bad that a major peice of my microblogging arogration just died off. - denzuko

Bump for clarification and Happy Birthday Paul! - Charlie Anzman

nice. :) big group. - edythe

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wow. that's a great group of folks. - pea ♥ fierce as a woozle

Yes, from top left. - joey

<3 - Derrick

yay! that's us! so great meeting everyone. :) - holly from iPhone

very cute! - Rachel Lea Fox

:-D - Live4Emma (L4S)

Wish I were there. - Robert Scoble

No Akiva, eh? -

Robert, did you receive a very special voicemail? - joey

Lots of fun meeting everyone! - Bren, Photophobe

Sweet - Rodfather

Looks like y'all had a blast! (understatement) :D - Jon, the Beartato of FF

joey: yeah, I got a drunkvoicemail from Tad who was using Alex's phone! Lots of fun, wish I were there. I didn't answer cause I was on a date with Maryamie. - Robert Scoble

@angrykeyboarder and Outsanity - Akiva is there...he's hiding behind the Chris Pirillo pillow. - Her Lindsay-ness

Is that the biggest non-SXSW FF meetup? - Ha3rvey (not Akiva)

YAY! - Rochelle

It was a pure blast from start to finish. Leave it to a group of FriendFeeders to want to reconstruct the room to their liking before sitting down to eat. Robert, it would've been great to have you. Next time you're in town and have some time, let us know, and we'll corral everyone up again. - Akiva Moskovitz

It's great that you all got to meet in that context! - James Stratford

Oh... I'm starting to understand now... Chris Pillillow and Akiva ARE THE SAME PERSON!! OMG!!! - Mark Jepsen

I like how the pillow looks like it was digitally added later. - Akiva Moskovitz

(This could be bigger gossip than Kol's engagement!) - Mark Jepsen

Haha, Mark. :-) - Kol Tregaskes

Bump for the good times. - Mark Krynsky

:) - edythe

Awesome group shot :) - Mark Essel from iPhone

Holy crap! Amazing. - Vincent X

18 more comments

I wanna go back in time and be adopted by your family just so I can be part of so much awesome. - ♥patricia♥

wow. that's bigger than my dad's 'fro! - Anika

HAHAHAHAHAH FABOO MAMA!!!! - Mona Nomura

BSA rules - Josh Haley

oh sh! so nice! - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

This is the greatest family photo ever. - Mike Doeff

Chris, because of you, this has been my favorite ff meme...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA - Anna Haro

i told you, Haro.. - Caroline

Caroline, if you have photos more magical than Chris, then you better post them!!! - Anna Haro

I'm liking this because the suit reminds me of Herb Tarlek -

in due time haro gonna ask mom were in some weird attic she put them - Caroline

Is that English? - Mona Nomura

*bump* - Rodfather

oh my god. - edythe

OMG THE HAIR! - Kevin D. White

Flinstones frames. lol! - Carmen

LOL yet so adorable - Lorna from twhirl

*bump* you can't hide from the rebirth of this meme. - Mark Krynsky

Bump for good times. - Mark Krynsky

Roll call...this can be great if we all participate. Add yourself to this shared map. I created a placemark on the 2 major intersections near where I live. - Mark Krynsky

101 more comments

or just list location...I'll start...Chatsworth, CA - Mark Krynsky

I would but I won't -

near Chicago - LogEx

How do I add myself? - Mo Kargas

Grayson, GA - Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF

Puyallup, WA - Bren, Photophobe

Mo, I'm a newb to the shared maps stuff, but I turned on collaboration and allowed anyone to edit the map. There should be an edit button and then you can add a placemark. - Mark Krynsky

erm...Adelaide, SA, Australia - Mo Kargas

Sydney, Australia. - Andrew Trinh

Yeah, I don't see how to add anything to the map - Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF

But you already have Rahsheen. - Andrew Trinh

Well it's working because I see others are adding themselves...Make sure you are logged into your Google account. - Mark Krynsky

After most have put their placemarks on, don't let anyone edit it because there's always someone out there waiting to fuck shit up. - Andrew Trinh

This guide may help http://local.google.com/support... - Mark Krynsky

@Andrew...good point. I just changed it from public to unlisted which only makes the map available to those with the URL. - Mark Krynsky

Even so, last time we had the Confessions account details on FF it was tinkered with. - Andrew Trinh

I added mine, but in the process of learning I think I nudged the Sydney, Australia points off a little. Sorry. - Rob H.

Ok, think I did it! - Bec Rowe @d0tski

Robert bought me a new house in the northern suburbs. - Andrew Trinh

@Bec...nice. You are the first brave female on here. - Mark Krynsky

Cool idea, Mark! I was thinking something like this would be fun the other day. Duly added myself - or at least the nearest big intersection. ;) - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

Mousing over the usernames shows your Google profile info...cool. - Mark Krynsky

I marked a bus stop near my house. But not TOO near. :) - Nine

If you haven't yet...go add FriendFeed to your Google Profile...it will then auto-discover and allow you to add a ton of other profiles you have. - Mark Krynsky

Thanks for the profile tip - I hadn't updated it since I moved here! - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

Added myself. Verona, Italy - Stefano

Added. Sydney, Australia - Jay

Added. Doha, Qatar. - Mohamed J

Thanks guys. This is coming along nicely. It's great to have as a resource to see where everyone is from. Hopefully this can become a standard feature on FF one day. - Mark Krynsky

Canterbury, Melbourne, Victoria added - Duncan Riley

Athens, Greece added, too :) - George Tziralis

Added. - Atul Arora

Ace idea, I've added mine in Kent, England. - Kol Tregaskes

There's no spot for "Hell, Eternity" ... *sigh* I'll have to give in to my worldly location... - Kyle Brady

Added, Near Paris, France - Olivier Castets

Asia's letting the side down - Toby Graham

added, North London, UK - Rory

Current count: 13 US, 11 Europe, 3 Australia, 1 Middle East. Happy to see many others add themselves overnight. Hoping more will continue this. - Mark Krynsky

Done ! Waterloo Belgium - Jacopo Gio

Added myself! - Haggis (Sean Loyless)

Hey Robert Haas - We're apparently neighbors. - edit. Okay maybe not, unless you live at the airport. XD - Haggis (Sean Loyless)

I've read the instruction and still don't see the button thing to add myself. I'm feeling pretty stupid right now. -

@Jill, make sure you are logged into your Google account and then click on the edit button above the list of names already on the map. You will then see the pushpin in the upper left hand side of the map. - Mark Krynsky

Thanks Mark! I see it all now. -

Great idea! - Alan Le

Added. Seems like there are a lot of us in the Bay Area...we must do a get together at some point. - Neal Jansons

@Neal yea, we really need a FriendFeed meetup. I might be up there for Web 2.0 in March...or we can have one at SXSW if a large number of us are going. Let's plan and get the Upcoming page going. - Mark Krynsky

Am I the only FriendFeeder in VA? - Aram Zucker-Scharff

@Mark Not gonna make SXSW, but am definitely down for working on an FF get together. March is long enough away to make sure plenty of people have time to plan ahead. I added you on Upcoming so we can start coordinating it. Anyone else interested/want to help set this up? - Neal Jansons

Maybe we can talk Paul & Bret into letting us invade the FF offices for a meetup in conjunction with Web 2.0? That would be sooooo cool! - Mark Krynsky

Oooh, now that's a really great idea. - Neal Jansons

I'm there :) - Alejandro

Yay Alejandro...first South American..and my old stomping grounds in Argentina no less :) - Mark Krynsky

Added! - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Neat. Added. - Rodfather

Added. - michael sean wright

Alright Shey! We finally have a Canadian...let's see if your fellow compatriot Mark Wilson joins the fray. - Mark Krynsky

@NiceFishFilms, your pushpin seems a bit off up there in Russia. Dana Point is thousands of miles from there :) - Mark Krynsky

Oh, I see now...you added 2. You're a pushpin litterbug :) - Mark Krynsky

Added.. - CW™

Another snowflake pushpin *waves to Shey* - Micah Wittman

whoo hoo! Canadian snowflakes FTW! - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Added.Hi from Russia.:) - Igor Poltavskiy

How do I add myself again? How do I add my ff to my gmail account? - Amani

Done - ♥patricia♥

Cairo, Egypt - Hayk H.

reykjavik, iceland - siggimus

Cologne, Germany - Holger Eilhard

Carcavelos, Portugal - Ricardo Vidal

Added New Jersey but boy, it took a while to get the Pin logo on the screen, not so obvious - Sally Church

London EC1 UK - Joe Dawson

Added - Michelle Martinez

Added - Bwana ☠

Pinned! sheesh this just cost me 1/2 hour of time as I scrolled thru all the folks :) - bear (aka Mike Taylor)

Except for Bret, there are no FriendFeeders on the penninsula between San Jose and San Francisco. So much for Silicon Valley early adopters. - Ryan Kuder

Added! I'm the first in The Netherlands :-) - TobiasVerhoog.com

Added. First in Japan! - rawwell

London, Ontario, Canada. Represent!! - Mark Wilson

I think I added me. HOpe it worked - Amani

added! - matthew john ernisse

This is truly awesome! - Mathew™ one of a kind

Cluelessness alert! I'm not seeing how to add my pushpin! - Hutch Carpenter

For some reason whenever i use google maps in creation-mode, it defaults to some other maps I've used, not the one I'm trying to access - ah, figured it out. Had to de-activate some other collaborative maps - anna sauce

Added. What a great way to see who's on FF in Austin, TX! - Carter Rabasa

Added myself in Shenzhen,China. - Steve Chou

courtenay, canada - http://friendfeed.com/ernieya... - ernie yacub

added me. Coimbatore, South India - vijay

Added Bangalore, India. - Mahesh CR

Added - Glenn Slaven

Added - Youngmin Kim

I'm added now, too. - Kamilah Gill

Nice! I'm the only active FriendFeeder in Montreal: Quebec represents FF! I could be a French Canadian FF ambassador or something. =) - ElijahBailey-Zu of FF <0,

Added - ThenWang

Added - James Myatt

Added. I am now an icon :^) - Nick B.

Added =) - ChaCha Fance

Added. - Bonnie Foster

Looks great in Google Earth! (from Paris) - Liviu Barbat

Added - Michael Fidler

Added. Antananarivo, Madagascar - Thierry R. Andriamirado

Finally me too :) Greetings from Ankara Turkey :) - Burçak Çubukçu

What is transforming... FriendFeed, or the idea of FriendFeed? - Christopher Galtenberg

117 more comments

Thanks for the update, Paul! - Anne Bouey

THANK YOU! - teh Dork Knight

Fabulous News :) - Susan Beebe

Noticed the "leaked" Facebook UI screenshots and the groups blog post today, and both seem FriendFeed inspired: nice to see Facebook trying to bring the stuff we like about FriendFeed to a larger audience. - Mark Trapp

To Robert Scoble: I told you so ;-) - Jesse Stay

Sounds like they're adding some of FF's features to FaceBook. yay - Internet's Tad from fftogo

Mark - got link? - Susan Beebe

Thanks Paul :) - ashish

Devil is in the details: "couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world" == Facebook projects with FriendFeed-like elements == no work on FriendFeed itself. - EricaJoy

Paul, FriendFeed rocks as Gmail does ;) - Orlando Pozo

Thanks for the update, the more you communicate, the less we have to speculate. - Peter Hoffmann

The fact that these improvements are coming to Facebook and not friendfeed will not sway those who like friendfeed but dislike Facebook. - Alex Scoble

Thank you Paul for bringing "FriendFeed goodness to the larger world" -- THAT sounds awesome!! - Susan Beebe

integration with facebook? - Rocco Galluzzo

@Alex Scoble: That's true - Jorge Escobar

Susan: http://blog.facebook.com/blog... and http://mashable.com/2009... - Mark Trapp

I hope out of the chrysalis emerges an infested Kerrigan. That'd be awesome http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki... - Ivan Kirigin

Thanks Mark, much appreciated... I'll check those out - Susan Beebe

+1 Ivan :) - Benjamin Golub

But we knew this was the deal the moment the full details of the purchase of friendfeed by Facebook became public. - Alex Scoble

Yeah, I don't give a crap about Facebook. I want to know about FriendFeed. - Rochelle

Is it the interface people dislike about Facebook or the people they're friends with on Facebook? I can imagine being able to import all your subscribers from FriendFeed and have them in a separate group that doesn't interact with other groups you may have on Facebook. - Cristo

sadly, no one with any power seems to care about FF anymore. - Joe Silence is not dead

I'm glad to hear this. I prefer FriendFeed to Facebook any day of the week. - Nathan Clayton

And the answer for me would be some of both. I have real life friends and family that I don't necessarily want to get into the same discussions with as I do with people here. - Cristo

And there's your answer, Rochelle. friendwho? friendwhat now? Oh, you mean Facebook! (No I mean friendfeed) friendwho? (rinse, lather, repeat) - Alex Scoble

there are some ui differences (and i tend to prefer friendfeed in those cases) but i have friended quite a few FF people in FB and the experience is remarkably similar in many ways. - Jason Wehmhoener

Another big difference is I don't think you get the same FOAF interaction on Facebook as on FriendFeed. - Cristo

yep - Jason Wehmhoener

I hope my FaceBook peeps are ready for the FriendFeed firehose ... past experience would say that they're in for a shock. - Crutis

Thanks for the transparency on the Friendfeed "ghost town" matter Paul. Much appreciated. - Alex Knight

Thanks Paul... bring the special sauce to Facebook: http://blogs.zdnet.com/weblife... - Andrew

I like the "chrysalis stage" analogy - sounds cool.... goes an looks for FF goodness butterfly! - Susan Beebe

Good to know that FriendFeed still has some fight left; hope that translates into a viable and sustainable platform/utility for the masses (though I quite enjoy the close-knit, uber-geek community that it's become). - Christian

I don't like the chrysalis analogy. The butterfly emerges from the chrysalis and buggers off leaving the shell. Of course, it might then also get eaten by a bird. Tweet, tweet. - Mark H

Mark LOL nice, ... haha - Susan Beebe

Note that he didn't say that FriendFeed.com was going away, only that they're diverted to bringing it to a much larger audience - Jesse Stay

The problem is Scoble (Robert) and MG both just sent half of FriendFeed away so most of those that would benefit from this announcement won't even see it. - Jesse Stay

Jesse, I didn't get that from Paul's comment. I read that some of the friendfeed ideas will be going into FB. I like that idea, but I still prefer FF to FB because of the different conversations here that I don't have with friends and family. - Travis Koger from iPhone

Yeah, Paul's statement won't help friendfeed. This will just either give people more reason to go to Facebook or find another service entirely. - Alex Scoble

What Alex and Rochelle said. This sounds like a "we're bringing FF to Facebook" announcement, and I don't give a damn about Facebook. I want to know what's happening HERE. And Cristo, both, but more the interface. I care about the friends I've made here, and I'm connected with many of them now on Facebook as well, but I prefer to interact with them here, because I like it better. - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

Travis, he didn't say that - you read that, but he didn't say that. I'm willing to bet FriendFeed.com will not go away. - Jesse Stay

As much as I agree about Scoble and MG driving people away, they have also effectively flush out some comment from the FF team. - Travis Koger from iPhone

Travis, there are better ways of getting the FF team to comment - Jesse Stay

:( I quite liked the caterpillar. - Nick Lothian

I think it's the opposite, the butterfly is becoming this crawling caterpillar :) - Jorge Escobar

Oh I don't think FF will go away, and damn will hope it doesn't either! - Travis Koger from iPhone

What I do see is more Facebook integrated into the FriendFeed environment - I think that's a good thing - Jesse Stay

The critical difference between Facebook and FriendFeed is the social model. With Facebook as it is today, you need to be mutual friends to see each others content. There is a "fan page" model but it is oriented toward "publishing/celebrity" rather than information sharing. FriendFeed has an asymmetric model like Twitter, where you can easily discover someone's content without any "friend" gesture whatsoever, and you can follow without friending. This makes the converation more discoverable, and useful.. - Adina Levin

Agree Adina. - Travis Koger from iPhone

If the integration is bringing public/asymmetric to Facebook, then it will be very useful indeed. If the integration is to add FriendFeed-style service integration into the symmetric/private Facebook model, it will be much less useful - it's more of the same - I'll be able to more easily share updates from youtube or last.fm or delicious to my friend network, but be unable to discover new people and infomation. - Adina Levin

Adina: And unless Facebook goes radically toward that model, it won't suffice for me. I could not care less about their upcoming redesigns. - Christopher A Carr

@Jesse - I can't see any sign that they are working on FriendFeed at all. All the indications are that the FF team is now working on Facebook, and only Facebook. That's great for Facebook, and I'm sure they will do wonderful work there. But don't delude yourself that FriendFeed is going to get anything more than critical fixes, and maybe the occasional thing done in someone's spare time. - Nick Lothian

Butterflies look totally different than caterpillars and they also fly away - Melanie Reed

Crickets chirping... is this site alive?? :) - Christopher Galtenberg

+100 Adina. The things I like best about FriendFeed (easy content/people discovery, FoaF, asymmetrical following and being followed) are completely opposite to Facebook's core model. That's why as much as people keep talking about Facebook adding FF-like features, I don't see the REAL FF core features making it over, because the mindset is different. - Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF

I don't see this announcement as anything new, or as reassuring. We knew from the time of the acquisition that there would be would be some movement of FF capabilities into FB. The real question is whether this means absorption of FF into FB or attracting the FB user base into FF. The comment about "bring[ing] FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world" still leaves that question open. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

+1 everything Alex Scoble has said. Friendwhat? What's a feed? Who uses RSS anymore? We've got PubSubWTFOMGBBQ now! - Mr. Gunn

Agree with Jandy on +100 Adina. - Amy℠

Also, I agree with Jandy and Adina's comments. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

Nick, Paul just said they're working on other projects right now. That still doesn't mean FriendFeed is going away. I'm not deluding myself at all. I'm telling everyone else they're deluding themselves by assuming it's going away. All the FriendFeed team is still using FriendFeed, and Paul just tried to give us comfort not to worry. For some reason we all don't want to believe him. It's actually kind of amusing. - Jesse Stay

I wonder what the powers that be mean by "FriendFeedy goodness"? Is it understood what WE like about it vs. FB? - Amy℠

Paul - Wishing you all the best as you tend your new butterfly garden :) I'll be here to enjoy them! - Susan Beebe

Jesse: "For some reason we all don't want to believe him." <-- Don't want to believe what? He didn't really say anything. - Christopher A Carr

This is not the news that Friendfeed fans were looking for. - Vezquex: God of FF

The issue isn't belief that they are going to do something. The question is what they are going to do, and whether that will continue the core value of FriendFeed, which is not just information aggregation but discoverability. - Adina Levin

I know more about the "Last Days" and heaven than I know about what's going to happen to FriendFeed as we have come to know it than was given in your rather cryptic answer, Paul. :) And while that may not be a fair comparison (God actually gave details and signs), there is something definitely not forthcoming about your response. A person usually withholds details that affect another... more... - Melanie Reed

Melanie, in other words, Paul works for a technology company in Silicon Valley that doesn't disclose future features, products, and services until they are ready. - Cristo

Hopefully this helps to quiet all of the "friendfeed is dying" talk. Because this thread proves ff is alive and well. - Garin Kilpatrick

@Jesse - I read it differently to you. To me, Paul is saying "We are taking what we were working towards on FriendFeed, and trying to bring that goodness to a bigger audience". No one is claiming they are going to shut down FF. - Nick Lothian

@Jesse - Want to make a bet on the number of new features added to FF before the end of the year? - Nick Lothian

You read my mind. Having seen a few acquisitions, I am wondering if FF staff was told to put the site in bugfix mode. - EricaJoy from IM

Cristo, to deliver some straightforward talk is not about giving away company details. If you have a product that is original and stands on its own, you don't need to refer to it as a "butterfly". Many companies even promote something new and upcoming especially to their loyal user base. It gives a signal. A proper one. It tells your users and future users enough so that they can make an informed decision about what they want to do instead of keeping them on tenderhooks - Melanie Reed

"the chrysalis stage in most butterflies is one in which there is little movement" (via wikipedia) So if you follow that metaphor then eventually FriendFeed will go through a metamorphosis -- that means it's not dead... really how hard can it be to get what he's saying? - Chris Heath

Its pretty hard :) The burning question is if they are putting FF goodness in to the walled gardens that are Facebook or are they bringing FF openness to FB too. I think the people here want the open forums that are FF not the closed ones that are FB. If FB is going hybrid with both walled gardens and open forums that would be OK too. People on FF want open forums... like Twitter and FF... without the crude interface that is Twitter and without the uncertainty that is FF now. - Ed Millard

Facebook is gonna have to rip off much of the privacy to maximize their product in the real-time web world. I am going to assume FF goodness is going to be applied to FB :) *crosses fingers* - Susan Beebe

Just a thought... why does "longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world" JUST mean facebook.com? What I get from this is that they are working on a range of things, maybe bringing the FriendFeed sauce to a range of sites, powered by the Facebook back end. Who knows what that means. A FriendFeed service powered by FacebookConnect? Also to...... more... - Johnny Worthington

LMFAO. Johnny++ - Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF

FB needs to leave the privacy for the walled garden and the inner circle. Their current user base likes that. They just need a second feed that is an open forum and you can talk there without it bleeding in to your inner circle feed. - Ed Millard

Seems like the inner circle is breaking down some now, what with parents and other relatives friending teenagers. I'm guessing the information posted on the walls these days is not as private. Is there a way on FriendFeed to limit what on your wall can be seen by particular people and groups? - Cristo

Yes, but blocking doesn't work so well since you can just use Chrome's Incognito mode to get around it. - Alex Scoble

Translation: if you haven't switche to Facebook yet, you better do it now so you can get a good vanity URL. - David Chartier from iPhone

I don't know what all the fuss is about. But could we have the long answer too, please? - Laura Norvig

Although I'm interested, FB != FF. I don't see how the two mix in a way that makes me feel otherwise. Mixing audiences is not a good thing for me (with a few exceptions) and I know others share the same thought. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

Did anyone notice that Robert Scoble didn't comment on this thread? What does this mean? Does it mean Robert Scoble won't exist soon? He must be working on a Monday afternoon, no? ;) - Cristo

Paul, will FF be here in 1 year, 5 years? - Robert Higgins

Robert, will you and I be alive in 5 years? - Cristo

Thanks for the update Paul.. - Chris Myles

Cristo I am funking nobody, I would like Paul to quantify his post. Simple. Will FF be here in 1 year? Will FF be here in 5 years? - Robert Higgins

Robert, I was trying to make the point that he might not know and can't predict what will happen over time. - Cristo

IMO friendfeed shoud attract more general audience... Facebook and twitter are having more general users. Most of the FF users are tech bloggers or those who needs aggregation services... I dont know it's just my feeling or not . but this is my impression on FF. but it's great service.. the features are too good... but we will roam were we meet our friends... thats most of the people are into twitter and FB. - Sarath

Sarath, is there a place you can get away from tech bloggers? :) - Cristo

Ohhhh a perrrttty butterfly, I'm moist with anticipation. - sofarsoShawn

Glad to hear it, Paul. - WorldofHiglet

Cristo: i almost made the same observation an hour or two ago when i first read through this posting and its comments. I was skimming and kept seeing alex, alex, alex... and thinking to myself... where's Robert!?! - Chris Heath

Great news. Thanks! friendfeed team. :D - Bicentennial (Franc)

@Sarath - I have a lot more in common with the people I've met here on FriendFeed than FB or Twitter. Twitter is too hard to search, and FB (and Twitter to a good extent) is driven by the people you know in RL (and unfortunately I don't have nearly as much in common in RL with my family, co-workers and acquaintences as I do with people scattered all over the world who I have met on FF).... more... - Her Lindsay-ness

I think that in his cryptic statement he means, and a lot of people here agree with me, that more Facebook's going to get more FriendFeedy. Which doesn't mean that FF still isn't dead or doomed. After all, he works for Facebook now. FriendFeed=open forum, Facebook=walled garden, totally opposite master metaphors; but I don't think Zuckerberg gets it, and FF belongs to Zuckerberg now. So this is really about FB; FF's still in limbo. Still, some FF people friended me at FB, and I put them in a special list. - Dennis Jernberg

@FF-team keep on rocking :). BTW I also think it's really cool you guys open-sourced tornado. - alfred westerveld

+1 what alfred said, and good to hear words like "longer-term" & "beautiful" coming straight from The Walrus - keep that vision strong. Hope all goes well for FF team doing some good re-inventing the Octopus Garden of FB - seems you've got your work cut out for you there! It would be so nice if any way to keep a "simple & pure" form of FriendFeed alive (maintained and developed - more open source?) for us to enjoy, but no worries .... you've simultaneously raised the bar and paved the way for the rest! - Dan Freeman

Good luck with the development Paul! Hopefully Zuck has some positive insight. - Garin Kilpatrick

I like butterflies. - Harold Cabezas

Paul: If someone offered me a bag of money to do what you guys did, I would have done exactly the same (probably a lot faster too). However, it would be nice if you spent an hour answering some of the questions here. It might also give people like me a little more faith, in what used to be your primary project; Friendfeed. You made the best platform on the planet - why not use it to let us know what the heck's going on? - Jim Connolly

I'm assuming that Facebook wants to keep their roadmap quiet. I respect that but leaving you community in the dark for a brand that the applications stand for community building is rather ironic. - manielse (Mark Nielsen)

SUPER!! I don't Blame ya 1 Darn bit fer Dumpin' FacePOOP Paul!! ;PPP Wait FacePOOP is the Maggot Stage!! ;)) - Billy Warhol

If I can still have all my friends that I have here on friendfeed and share things with them the exact same way, I don't care what "www" address I have to type in to get it. I just hope i don't have to give up any of FF's awesome features! Thanks for the update Paul! - David Cook

The problem is I don't know whether to wrote an app on your API or not because i'm not sure whether it will all be dropped in the "transformation". Imagine speding late nights and weekends coding something up only for it to be dropped suddenly. Need a decent long term picture. Looking at Cliqset. - Steven Livingstone-Pérez

Good point Steven - and one of the reasons many of us are spending so little time developing our networks here. - Jim Connolly

waiting.... - ffcode

ffcode: Good luck with that ;-) - Jim Connolly

So the changes are at Facebook not FriendFeed, Paul? - Kol Tregaskes

And good luck to all of your team - Ozkan Altuner from iPhone

This is a truly disappointing/concerning post and I think it would have been much better to hold comment until something more tangible could be discussed. Thanks for adding to the confusion/drama Paul. - Nicholas Kreidberg

yemezler - MobilAdam

I do care about what happens next, but this is the best news of the day nonetheless ! thanks for giving us updates at last ! and I do hope FF will awaken again ! such a great tool, but letdown since the announcement of the buyback by FB - laetSgo

will I see this post in my "best of week" email from FF? - Kirill Bolgarov

If Facebook is going to get fixed, please remember that it needs fixing politically, not just technically. It needs to give people the option to open their data to Google - for instance. A walled garden where the walls are fixed in place sucks. - Tim Tyler

@Paul, or perhaps an Alien will erupt forth from its stomach? (kidding, kidding!) - j1m

FriendFeed would be fine without Twitter in my opinion... I block most tweets anyway. Why do you have the impression that it is a parasite of Twitter? I am not happy about the lack of support and innovation here now though. But I'm gonna ride this boat till it grounds because it's still the best ship to be on, IMO. - Her Lindsay-ness

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Yeah. /deep voice - Josh Haley

MG is missing the conversations in FF, which were not a parasite of Twitter. In fact, the FF faithful deliberately avoid commenting on Twitter-originated content, which I think is a significant driver of FF's slow downward spiral. - Christian Anderson

Part of the fun is knowing that the Twitter-only readers don't read my responses, don't get the value of a threaded conversation and are yet again just blowing their bugle into their own beadspread. - Aron Michalski from BuddyFeed

The twitter V Friendfeed rivalry is fascinating to watch from the outside but I'll say that my engagement is far higher on twitter and the boycott of tweets does the FF no favors. Could just as easily be symbiotic but whatever ;) - WarLord

To be clear, are these /conversations/ -truly- threaded or are we reduced to lumping another row on the bonfire of banality? - Jay Cuthrell

Well, point taken but having to go look for replies on another page or a column of a client seems counterproductive. As it stands it doesn't matter with me as I often will post and never have any response. I guess I'm not interesting or inflammatory enough. - Aron Michalski from BuddyFeed

I like sharing with FF as a mechanism to push back into Twitter. I periodically stop importing Twitter into FF. I've tried FF as a dumping ground and didn't like it longer term. Facebook seems more about presenting applications with annoying graphics in front of me. Reminds me why I stopped watching TV. Facebook will likely be next. - Jay Cuthrell

the point is, ff is no deader than twitter. neither is. where's stream splicing? - Steve Gillmor

Steve it hurts my feelings that not only don't you tweet on twitter, but you have given up on mp3 files too! And the irony is that the TriCaster is a vestige of the Amiga... - Michael Pinto

Many people hide Twitter in FriendFeed, and watch Twitter somewhere else. - Louis Gray

Interesting...Scoble pretty much (unless I just misunderstood) said the reverse.He thinks FF is the ghost town and Twitter is the place to be. I didn't realize either had problems. Both seem just as active to me, but I'm just a user too. - George Gray

posting Dare's FB comment here: Dare Obasanjo That's a bogus statement and you know it. Friendfeed was a Twitter app that lots of people used. People have moved on to other apps since the FB purchase (Brizzly?). This isn't a reflection on Twitter just a sign that people no longer treat Friendfeed as a primary destination for conversations around microcontent - Steve Gillmor

Interesting that Dare's comment is on Facebook, not Brizzly? Once FB solves the orphan comment problem, many will move there. For now, I see little difference in FF since the acquisition except for frozen development, as MG points out. Brizzly or Seesmic or Threadsy do not provide a replacement for FF, at least for me, at least not yet. What has changed is the time FB has to bridge the... more... - Steve Gillmor

Michael I tweet on twitter thru here, just like others use Tweetie, etc. I haven't given up on mp3 but rather moved to mp4. YouTube is currently not providing an RSS feed for my stream, and the approval process for downloads seems stuck for the last few episodes. I used my Amiga and Toaster until they stopped supporting them, and the Tricaster goes well beyond the Toaster. - Steve Gillmor

i had to remove twitter from friendfeed to prevent doubleposting on facebook. (as if there were no problems in our world) - kosmar

kosmar don't understand your problem. I post here, it goes to Twitter, which pipes it to Facebook. However, Facebook comments to my posts are orphaned on Facebook. - Steve Gillmor

Steve, I can't believe how many comments missed the semantics of the post - that the pointy end of the stick was jabbing at Twitter. It may be a style thing I'm already used to, I don't know. :) - Micah Wittman

steve, well i want all ff lifestream aggregation be on facebook - but the ff app on facebook only posts "posts" on the wall, which look ugly and therefore are less conversational it seems. i would prefer to have my fb-status changed by the items the ff app pushes (like twitter app does) - best twitter to facebook seems tweetpo.st (but is handicapped by twitter follower ratio issues at... more... - kosmar

… orphaned comments are one big problem. if all would be wave (or maybe pshb), that could be fixed, i guess. - but then, if someone talks about you on the phone, that will forever be orphaned anyway (i do hope so) - kosmar

it just seems to me having recently tried ff in more frequency that with facebook and twitter it is far easier to request contact and it feels more direct - unless i am missing a way to have this dynamic in ff - Alexander Kitingan

Network effects suggest its wise to work with many networks, not against them. Tis a bit arbitrary and capricious for a user to 'prefer' one nascent platform over another. - Just some guy

No comment - Eric @ CS Techcast

Commenting here so that MG stops feeling bad that nobody comments on his stuff anymore. - Bruce Lewis

Wow... that makes me so sad - Holly Rae, FFer

*sigh* - Yolanda

... - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF) from iPod

*shrugs* I get more comments now, I think. - Jennifer Dittrich

This used to be my childhood dream... - Rochelle

quite right rochelle :) - MG Siegler

but...I don't wanna have bloody feet! - WorldofHiglet

Now look what you've done, MG. You're scaring Higlet! - Bruce Lewis

I noticed that my Hot Threads saved search mostly turn up non-english threads now, so there's definitely been an effect. That said, FriendFeed may be down but it ain't out yet. - Ahsan Ali aka. Slick

MG, you're right about the FF infrastructure being on autopilot, but I would characterize the activity as a network of small towns - not a (monolithic) ghost town. Anyway, compared another article of late, you did the topic justice. :) - Micah Wittman

MG: Don't be so fatalistic. FF is there, it's up to us, the users, what we make of it. Personally I like this place so much that I think I'll hang in here until the cleaning staff starts placing upturned chairs on the table and asking the last few customers to hurry up with their drinks. - Paola Bonomo

i haveNEVER had one comment,but I got one like.I must be posting crap.I'll stop and change up.what's the deal here-the person who gets the most comments get JUST a mention on best of the week or day? - R_ C

R_ C, step 1 is to make your feed public. I see a private feed and assume what's in it is none of my business unless I know you in real life. - Bruce Lewis

My feed's public, but I've never gotten many comments. Still, I comment on others' posts a lot. FF's still here for me, so I'm still here. As for Posterous, it and FF complement each other. For me, FF is where Twitter, Facebook, Posterous, Blogger, and Google Reader come together in a single feed. So it's still important to me. I don't think it's so much "dead" as "alive and still dying"... - Dennis Jernberg

Nice, but I think I woulda used the opportunity to pull out some REM "Cuyahoga" lyrics instead of taking the Madonna angle. - Ken Sheppardson

liking this place wouldn't get all those tech talks we could have it would be more of a fun place now, memes going on and all that, a lot of geeks have moved on - ffcode

Dennis: that it is an aggregator is the reason why it remains Scoble's homepage at twitter and the badges are still up at scobleizer :) - ffcode

It's apparent that what we have here is just another bad creation http://www.youtube.com/watch... - Jay Cuthrell

This makes me want to write an article about this. Friendfeed has a better interface to communicate, but people are spending their time on Facebook. - Andrew

Andrew: i think the type of people facebook has can be attracted to ff if we have themes here and private msging be a prime feature - ffcode

Scary stuff, Sarah. I mean really - mushrooms on an omelette? :) Seriously, though, it's good to see you're feeling better and back to blogging. Hope your path to a full recovery is a clear and short one... - Thomas

get well soon, :( - chaz2b

get well soon! - mjc

Back in the 90's, my late cat Basil had a few grand mal seizures. He used to sleep between my feet so the seizure would wake me up. I'd place him on the floor and his thrashing would move him across the carpet. After a bit, he'd stop. His eyes would be open but he was non-responsive. After another minute, he'd regain his senses and meow plaintively as if he realized something unusual... more... - George Brickner

My sister had a few when she was very young and it was terrifying. I'm glad you're feeling better and I hope that you don't experience anything more. - joey

get well soon! - Joe Silence is not dead

OMG. - Dave Friedel

Nice survival reactions in the ambulance. I bet that drive will make a difference in your recovery. - Todd Hoff

I finished the blog post... at least for now. Man, it took me forever. I want my brain back. - Sarah Lane

Sarah - I'm glad you're feeling better, what a scary experience! - Jennifer Dittrich

Oh my. Good luck with your neurologist appointment and I hope that you get the best diagnosis possible! I'm sorry about the medication with horrible side effects but glad that it exists and that you survived! - joey

No alcohol? Won't you dissolve without your glue keeping you together? :) - Thomas

Cysticercosis doesn't sound like fun - hopefully you'll be able to kick it with just meds (if you do have it)... - Thomas

On the other hand, the BBB wiki page talks about using Nanotechnology for treatment - you could be Cyber-Sarah! :) - Thomas

That's really scary. It's good you had people around to help out and get you to the hospital. I hated Dilantin while I was on it. I couldn't drink alcohol, and it made me drowsy at times. Plus it never completely stopped my seizures. There are more effective seizure medications with fewer side effects. The trouble is that they tend to be more effective. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

Thx guys. It's really just about positive thinking right now... everybody tells me not to stress out.. um, yeah. - Sarah Lane

Just think - nanotechnology! It's all about the tech with you, Sarah... :) - Thomas

As for positive thinking, would it help if we started teasing about your sudden forced sobriety? :) - Thomas

This whole sobriety thing is just ridiculous. Come on, science. - Sarah Lane

Have you tried near-beer? Do you drink for the taste or the buzz? - Thomas

I've had a CT Scan twice. The contrast dye IV makes you feel like you're having a hot flash. Nothing head related though. I had a bone scan and EKGs. I've also had a few things that I won't mention (because no one wants to think about 'em). - George Brickner

You world travelers have to be careful of those French Foreign Lesions! Take care. - Steven W. Kelly

I don't really care about stuff that's outside of my friend group. My friends are already pretty good at bringing me good stuff from outside the group anyway. - Robert Scoble

48 more comments

will miss you. - Zee.

Zee: huh? - Robert Scoble

re "be right back" - Ken Sheppardson

wrong thread Zee? - Amit Nangare

This would get rid of all spam and bad actors. Or almost all, assuming you don't follow spammers. - Robert Scoble

Robert's initial first comment was "be right back", as a placeholder to keep the first slot while he composed his real first comment. Zee was responding to that - Ken Sheppardson

And it would bring back Techmeme-quality results because it would be based on people you follow and verify. Oh, and even better? The new list feature in Twitter will let you build different kinds of searches. - Robert Scoble

Ken: oh, I get it now. :-) - Robert Scoble

By the way, FriendFeed still has a better way to have conversations with your friends than Google Wave. :-) - Robert Scoble

cant wait to try google wave to tell how much it sucks - Muneeb Hussain

By the way, everyone complains about Twitter's spam but I get 100x more spam and more destructive spam on my blog's comments. - Robert Scoble

i cant comment till i actually try it .... comon google - Kashif Khan

I wish I had more invites to hand out. - Robert Scoble

I suspect most people are following few enough people on Twitter that they're capable of tracking "trends" themselves. - Ken Sheppardson

Scoble thank you for coming back - ffcode

Ken: absolutely not true. I'm watching nearly 5,000 people now and most of those are following thousands. - Robert Scoble

Robert: You're not "most people" - Ken Sheppardson

Ken: but the people I'm following ARE most people and most of them are following too many to keep track of trends themselves. - Robert Scoble

Most of the 5,000 people you're following are following thousands? I'd love to see the actual numbers behind that... you've done some analysis? - Ken Sheppardson

want a screenshot of your feed how it looks like? - ffcode

agreed - that type of search filtering would not only be useful, but the whole point of social network information sharing - using my friends as my distributed search engine for things I am interested in - Arthur Coleman

ffcode you want me to send you a screenshot? - Robert Scoble

Ken: informal analysis. I hand followed each of the people I'm following and looked at their following behavior. It is rare to find someone who is following fewer than 200 people now. At least amongst early adopter tech influencers that I like to follow. - Robert Scoble

Hm... There's an API call to retrieve a list of users a given user is following... would be simple to do a full-blown check.... - Ken Sheppardson

to build a list is also difficult as i have learned from the little experience i have had - ffcode

Ken: you're welcome to do that. - Robert Scoble

StatusSearch did a non-realtime version of this, but they appear to have scratched it at the moment. - Steve Farnworth

With viewpointapp.com; we are doing real time relevance and filtering within the people you follow. Search and trends sounds like a great idea. We will see what we can come up with! - Jay from ViewPoint

It would be interesting to see if the trends differ than the trends posted on the Twitter home page. I'm sure it would correlate to the size of your sample. - Mattb4rd

I might, Robert. Also, I hope the voice you hear in your head when you read my comments here isn't snide and snarky. I'm genuinely curious about this from a tech standpoint. :-) - Ken Sheppardson

I've wanted something like this for a long time. I guess I just assumed that it was obvious enough that someone (maybe even Twitter) would already be working on it. Maybe we'll take it up as a side project. - Ryan Kuder

I think this would be very useful. Twitter Times is going in this direction but right now it doesn't have search or trending topics. Their main focus now seems to be aggregating links/stories (techmeme-style) that are popular among the people that you're following. Here's my personalized Twitter Times page: http://www.twittertim.es/mdoeff - Mike Doeff

re trends for just the people you are following, it's right here: http://friendingtopics.com/ - Mike Lizun

What is being overlooked here and to which I believe I heard mention that Twitter was building in-house was the ability to trend against any topic/individual in the network. Perfect for gaining market feedback on competition outside of your network. - Gregory Hanson

Granted, it's a little off topic as the main point of the thread was for people you follow, but building an open trending app would broaden market appeal. - Gregory Hanson

That would be a good tool. But wouldn't it be cool if you got a pair of tech guys, built it out and returned to raise VC money yourself? :) Stop giving away your free ideas! - Louis Gray

I would love a Twitter-like Top 10 Trends (or 20 or 25) here on FF. I'd be curious to see the difference. Though I'm still pretty new here but people told me you can sort of simulate trends for yourself? - Christopher Annunziata from FreshFeed

Louis: I tried building new app at NPR last Friday and I decided I suck at it. :-) - Robert Scoble

Louis, hush! I want more free ideas. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

I've been enjoying the "search my timeline" feature in the Tweetie 2 iPhone app -- looking forward to the desktop client getting that feature as well. Totally agree with Robert, though: It seems like search/trends among the people i'm following has an incredible about of value to a user. A user like me. - Ryan Sholin

Mike Lizun: Works ok though it'd be better if you made trending topics at least 2 words (trending topics always seem to be 2-3 words). I get a lot of one-words that don't give me much. The trend should follow a longer duration of time as well. I am following 2000+ and only see a few tweets for certain trending terms. - beersage

yeah, i built out the search concept but saw Twitter announce they're doing it. decided to stick to other concepts and chase the $ elsewhere. thanks for the validation of a good idea though - Gregory Hanson

Wouldn't something similar be interesting on FB or any social network for that matter? Is Twitter more interesting due to the volume of tweets? - Dave Hodson

Twitter needs to incorporate this in the API, IMHO. - Dennis Jernberg

Sounds to me like something Facebook would do if they implemented trends. - James Harnedy

Good idea about the "Trending" element, Robert. As far as search, really FriendFeed got pretty close if only their import of Twitter friends could have been more complete (not just those already on FF). Stands to reason that the FF guys could have added a trending functionality, Alas... BTW, I just noticed that at ~ 2,500 subscriptions on FF, the "Add To List" pop-up craps out. No more... more... - Alex Schleber

BTW, been saying that Twitter needed search on one's friends/following stream for months: http://alexschleber.posterous.com/my-comm... - Alex Schleber

Yeah you r right, there exists no twitter trends just for your tweet stream/tweet inbox (tweets you receive from other people). - TrafficBug

Actually we have. http://journotwit.com - take a look at the Tag clouds. Also running http://uktjpr.com for the UK technology journalists and PR community so you can see what's happening right now in UK technology. - Dan Monsieurle

Cool but who needs/wants video - Once it shows up as audio (bootleged) I'm sure I'll enjoy it :-) - PXLated

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just a matter of resources. Most are happy with the video (tip: contains audio) - Steve Gillmor

YouTube video ain't much good to the working shlub who wants to listen on the commute home. I find Steve's audience hostility to be endearingly punk of him. "Office died for somebody's sins, but not mine!" - Dave Slusher

Dave -- try this in your favorite browser http://www.google.com/search... - Jay Cuthrell

the working shlub as you put it Dave can load the mp4 file on his ipod or iphone just fine. Hostility not present. - Steve Gillmor

Steve thank you for doing the GG and I like YouTube just fine, thank you. Got RSS audio feed too http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes... - Susan Beebe

I've never owned a player that would play an mp4. I was hoping you'd like the Patti Smith joke. Swing and a miss! - Dave Slusher

Yes Steve, video includes audio and a gazillion more bits than I need to download :-) - PXLated

Steve - Do love the shows once I get them - Always have. - PXLated

Patti Smith FTW. PX you're welcome. thx for listening or whatever it is you do. - Steve Gillmor

thx Susan, and thx to the bootleggers who feed the mp3s - Steve Gillmor

You're welcome Steve! I'm downloading now and the MP3 will be up soon at http://feeds2.feedburner.com/bootleg... - Jack

Since the return of GG I have not listened (seen)a single episode as when I have the time I don't have the bandwidth and vice versa. I know I live in a cultural backwater and use ancient one year old technology and that it's my fault but I miss the show. - Aron Michalski from fftogo

aron see comment above - Steve Gillmor

Steve - you're welcome! :) - Susan Beebe

Re: "just a matter of resources" - with Quicktime Pro, you can just "extract audio". Saves all of us downloading unnecessary video. (Thanks to whoever is doing the bootlegs). Also, it's nice to be able to "subscribe" and have new shows just show up. - Darius Dunlap

Thanks Steve. Seem to be a day late and a dollar short around here... - Aron Michalski from fftogo

Jack is the kind soul doing the bootlegging - i think - Susan Beebe

Yes I am. It's a non trivial process; 45 minutes to download from Youtube, several minutes to re-encode and add ID3 tags then 20 minutes to upload to archive.org - Jack

Hi guys, how have you all been? Have to hand it to Steve that he can get all the old gang members in a tizzy that (surprise) he's holding the reins. - Bruce Lerner

MP3 of this show: http://www.archive.org/downloa... The RSS feed will update itself soon - Jack

Thanks for this Jack. - Jay Cuthrell

Yeah, thanks Jack. I really appreciate your doing this. - Ken Morley

Darius after months of transition we are now producing a video show. The show is a different thing than previous versions, and will continue to change as warranted. It may be unnecessary video for you but it takes a lot of energy and resources for us, as well as from our sponsors and partners who like us are investing in the new realtime network. I'm trying to engineer an RSS feed of... more... - Steve Gillmor

In the end, if you wanted to go to the trouble (or some fan could do it), you might have to mash up with another service, like Blip.tv, that has more investment in episodic content to produce a feed with enclosures. Maybe check with Calacanis's guy. They seem to do a dual upload to Blip for TWIS and the Pollack show so they can use the more robust elements in the blip namespaces. - Amyloo

For what it's worth I like the new video format. In my opinion it's easier to follow who's saying what. I hook my MacBook up to my HDTV and the YouTube video starts playing within a minute via DSL/local Wifi net. - scott anderson

Sounds like a great setup Scott - Steve Gillmor from iPhone

At this rate, you'll be moving into America's bedrooms by Christmas. - Matt Terenzio

Steve, not a big deal, but what's the relationship between "the new realtime network" and doing GG in video (as opposed to audio)? Is video more "realtime" than audio? - Andrew Jaffe

Hey Steve, I thought after the Dylan news, the Gillmor Gang Christmas Album had been put on hold... - Cliff Gerrish

Andrew I see this new realtime network as something different and fascinating. More than audio, not how I see it. Different. - Steve Gillmor

Check out the YouTube embed on this page: publisher-side blindfold http://thinkprogress.org/2009... - Amyloo

Ok, I tried another angle, though resource heavy and space consuming to time align for the mobile hobo... I opened the YouTube page in Firefox with a Greasemonkey script installed and downloaded the file as a .flv, used Visual Hub to convert it to a M4v and then put it on my iPod Touch. By adding time to Realtime, I was able to enjoy the discussion in the cardboard box of my choice,... more... - Aron Michalski from BuddyFeed

seems like there's a song lyric about that... - Karoli

Yes - there's a solution for that: http://code.google.com/chrome... :-) Truth is you're the only one who ever mentions the issue so IE just isn't a priority at the moment (not that you aren't priority - I just have to go by what the majority of users are looking at). I'd rather people try to use other browsers as I can do a lot more with them and it is a much smaller cost to focus on those instead. I know I'm not the only one doing this these days. I have to look at the Opportunity Cost. - Jesse Stay

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I need to get a message up like Google Wave has encouraging people to install that plugin or use another browser. - Jesse Stay

Yeah ... I keep forgetting ... I have a team that is so competent at writing cross-browser code we never even think about it! As for "you're the only one who ever mentions the issue" well of course ... most users - who are the non-technical majority - would never say anything ... they just leave. Anyhow ... if you could care less, it's no skin off my back. I just wasn't sure if you... more... - Scott C. Lemon from email

I appreciate it Scott. I can develop much faster not worrying about IE than by worrying about it so it's just not a concern for me. I also feel good that I'm encouraging standards-compliant browsers at the same time, hopefully making my development costs and innovative potential even greater down the road. - Jesse Stay

Holden, I take it you have the numbers to prove that? - Jesse Stay

Holden, Matt can see my numbers? - Jesse Stay

Jesse, now we're all curious. Are you you going to share stats on bounce rate for visitors to SocialToo who come in on IE? - Mike Doeff

Mike, it doesn't matter - only 16% of users total use IE. The percentage of that 16% that then leave shortly after visiting would be minimal. I'd rather focus on producing useful stuff. When I can afford to focus on IE maybe, but right now this is working quite well for me. My traffic right now is sufficient the way I'm currently doing things. Could it be more? Maybe, but I'd rather focus on providing cool tools and constantly cranking out new stuff. That's worth much more to me. - Jesse Stay from email

Jesse ... did you know that your blog is now completely blocked to IE users? :-) I tried to click the link you tweeted ... I get two pop-ups, one saying "This site *requires* that you Connect with Facebook" - no option - with a Cancel button ... and then another pop-up that says "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site {url} ... Operation Aborted ... with an OK button. When I click OK the page is a blank white page. So much for reading Jesse anymore ... :-) Scott C. Lemon - Scott C. Lemon from email

That's up to you Scott - you don't use an RSS reader? Sounds like you weren't reading it anyway if that's the case. - Jesse Stay

No ... I see the tweets ... see if the title sounds interesting ... and then click the link in the tweet. On that particular machine, for testing purposes, the default browser is IE ... and that is how I saw the failure. In Firefox I get the same "This site requires that you Connect with Facebook." and a Cancel button ... on every page ... So non-Facebook users are sort of punished ...... more... - Scott C. Lemon from email

Scott, because you're not subscribed you missed that post. 1) RSS subscribers don't have to log into Facebook. 2) that message goes away after your 3rd visit. 3) Clicking Cancel also makes the message go away. 4) Logging in through Facebook also makes the message go away, and eventually will give you a much richer experience. 5) Happy to have you submit code to my plugin for that since... more... - Jesse Stay

Jesse, you are too funny ... :-) Hmm ... now "third visit" means that you also probably require cookies? And since I only allow Session Cookies ... that isn't going to work. As for your plug-in, great stuff, but I only work on code I'm paid to write ... or my own ideas. I've got far too many ideas ... I got two more tonight, and damn I'll have to hire more developers! Oh, and your blog... more... - Scott C. Lemon from email

Scott, yup, and I show people how to integrate Facebook into their apps. Pretty good advertising, huh? Look, I could care less about page views or visits (hint, regardless, it hasn't hurt a bit though). My goal on my blog is subscribers. If you don't want to read it, so be it - the things that I add like that are intended to be a service to the community. If you don't see it as such, fine. I know what's worked for me and what hasn't. - Jesse Stay

Jesse ... you seem to get so touchy about it ... I thought these threads were for discussions? I was simply bringing it to your attention, and sharing some thoughts. I thought you might be open to hearing about the user experience on your sites. I don't read a lot of blogs, but I have read yours from time to time when I see a post title that I find interesting ... I thought you might... more... - Scott C. Lemon from email

On the other hand, it's free. Crop For Free without ads? Thanks, Adobe! The UI's good too. - Stephen Mack from email

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First one is the unaltered original. - Stephen Mack from iPhone

It has soften but no sharpen. And most iPhone photos I take are a bit blurry, so sharpen would be useful. Maybe they plan to release a more fully-featured paid version? - Stephen Mack from iPhone

Here are the features I'd like to see added, aside from sharpen: Paste in a second image and resize it. Simple drawing tools (circles, squares, lines, arrows, text). Panoramas. Stretch a selection. - Stephen Mack

Agreed, it's crop and maybe a little exposure shift (though that's tricky on the small screen in ambient conditions). You really can't meaningfully edit a 3MP image on a 0.15MP display. I really think it's just a gateway drug to Photoshop.com. - LogEx

Not to discount crop. Crop can be invaluable. The rest was fun to play with for a few minutes. I don't have any plans to use Photoshop.com. It works fine locally. I definitely appreciate the effort from Adobe, and if they ever release a full-featured app, I'd certainly buy it, if the UI is the same and the cost is $10 or less. - Stephen Mack

While the third, fourth and fifth images weren't intended seriously (just showing the features that no one would ever use beyond novelty), that second one was where I tried to use the app to improve the original. As a thumbnail and on the iPhone I liked the edit better than the original. But when you click that second one and enlarge it, you can see how much noise was introduced when I tried to shift the exposure a touch. It's disappointing, really. - Stephen Mack

Crop is really handy... very nice for posting a quick image to a site. Resizing the crop should be an option, not the default. I'd pay for more features too, as long as they made sense for the format. - LogEx

I'm the most rank of rank amateurs when it comes to Photoshop. Now that it's been out for a few days, what do the pros around here think? - Stephen Mack

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